New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is facing criticism over a "tone-deaf" post touting subway safety in New York City, which came just hours after an illegal immigrant allegedly set a woman on fire and watched her burn to death.
"Governor Hochul, shame on you. There's nothing you can say that's going to make this right in New York," President-elect Trump's incoming border czar Tom Homan said Monday on "Fox & Friends," as he slammed the Democratic official for supporting sanctuary status in the Empire State.
In an X post on Sunday, approximately eight hours after the incident, Hochul claimed that crime has decreased on NYC subways since she deployed the National Guard to mitigate the issue earlier this year. Hochul sent 750 National Guard members to the subways last week in an effort to keep holiday crime in check.
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"In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day," Hochul's post read. "Since deploying the @NationalGuardNY to support @NYPDnews and @MTA safety efforts and adding cameras to all subway cars, crime is going down, and ridership is going up," she wrote.
Fox News Digital previously reached out to Hochul's office for comment on the criticism, but did not immediately hear back.
Homan, who recently journeyed to the Big Apple to discuss illegal migrant crime with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, pinned some of the blame on the Biden administration for lax federal immigration policies.
"Here's another example of an illegal alien killing an American citizen. It's almost a daily occurrence now, because a historic number of criminal aliens are walking the streets, because of this administration's policy in sanctuary jurisdictions and lax immigration enforcement," he said.
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"ICE has their hands tied," he continued. "Secretary Mayokas has given them priorities so they can't even go arrest illegal aliens anymore unless they're convicted of a serious crime, then maybe they can arrest them, so this is on this administration."
Sources identified the person of interest as 33-year-old Sebastian Zapeta. While not identifying the suspect, a high-level NYPD source told Fox News Digital he illegally entered the U.S. from Guatemala during Trump's first term in 2018.
The person of interest has no prior arrests in New York City and one prior arrest in Arizona, the source added.
The crime took place at Stillwell Avenue Subway station in Coney Island at about 7:30 a.m. when an illegal migrant allegedly approached a woman who had fallen asleep while seated on a subway train and used a lighter to ignite her clothes, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds, according to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
Hochul posted on X Sunday night to declare that any subway crime is "one too many" and laud the quick action taken by NYPD officers.
Officers investigated the situation after seeing and smelling smoke, discovering a woman standing inside the car fully engulfed in flames. The flames were extinguished with help from an MTA employee and a fire extinguisher and the victim was pronounced dead.
The suspect, who was found with a lighter in his pocket, is now in police custody.
Fox News' Greg Wehner and Andrea Margolis contributed to this report.
