Lawyer filmed giving racist rant in New York cafe says ‘I’m not racist’

Mr Schlossberg was filmed threatening to call immigration enforcement on the Spanish speaking employees

The lawyer who was filmed going on a racist tirade in a New York City deli says that his remarks are not truly reflective of who he is as a person.

“I’m not racist,” Aaron Schlossberg wrote in a statement posted to his Twitter account.

In the statement, Mr Schlossberg — who became the focus of an online campaign against him after the video emerged a week ago — said that he moved to New York “precisely because of the remarkable diversity offered in this wonderful city”.

“To the people I insulted, I apologise. Seeing myself online opened my eyes — the manner in which I expressed myself is unacceptable and is not the person I am. I see my words and actions hurt people, and for that I am deeply sorry,” he wrote. “While people should be able to express themselves freely, they should do so calmly and respectfully”.

“What the video did not convey is the real me,” he continued, emphasising the “not” in bold letters.

The video shows Mr Schlossberg berating a manager of a midtown Manhattan deli because his staff was speaking Spanish with customers. In the video, he says that the employees “should be speaking English” because they are in the United States.

He later threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the deli, saying that he assumed that the workers were undocumented immigrants, even though he appeared to have no evidence of their immigration status.

“My guess is they’re not documented, so my next call is to ICE to have each one of them kicked out of my country,” Mr Schlossberg says in the video. “If they have the balls to come here and live off my money — I pay for their welfare. I pay for their ability to be here. The least they can do — the least they can do — is speak English.”

The United States does not have an official language. Undocumented immigrants pay taxes in the US, but are generally not able to access American services like Medicaid.

The comments — which sparked a storm of criticism online, including an avalanche of negative Yelp reviews for his business and an online fundraising effort to send a Mariachi band to play for and troll him — come as the United States is engaged in a polarising debate about race.

The video is not the first time that Mr Schlossberg has been seen making divisive statements about race. Following the viral video of him in the New York deli, her videos emerged showing him at an alt-right-affiliated protest, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and calling a person an “ugly … foreigner”.