A French politician demanded that the United States return the Statue of Liberty in a tongue-in-cheek tirade against Donald Trump. Raphaël Glucksmann, a socialist Member of the European Parliament, told a cheering crowd that the US doesn’t represent the values that led France to give it the iconic landmark. At a meeting of the Place Publique centre-left movement, he said: “Give us back the Statue of Liberty… We’re going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty’.”
France 24 also reports Mr Glucksmann as saying: “We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home.” His “tyrants” claim points towards Mr Trump’s well-known admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The US leader has also been criticised in Europe for being soft on Russia and hard on Ukraine.
Mr Glucksmann suggested France would welcome the United States’ “best researchers” if the country wanted to fire the very people who had made the US “the world’s leading power”.
That appeared to reference the Trump administration firing hundreds of federal government workers and cutting research funding on health and climate research.
The Statue of Liberty is widely recognised as a symbol of freedom and democracy. It was dedicated on October 28, 1886, and designated a national monument in 1924.
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It was designed by the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and its metal frame was built by Gustave Eiffel, whose most famous work is the Eiffel Tower.
The statue is on Liberty Island in New York Harbour and is a short ferry ride from Ellis Island, which was the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the US.
A plaque at the base of the statue bears the famous inscription: “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”.
Since his return to the White House, Mr Trump has floated the idea of travel bans on scores of countries and kickstarted plans for mass deportations.
On Sunday, the Trump administration transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge issuing an order temporarily barring the deportations. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling, but they were reportedly not turned around.
The immigrants were deported after Mr Trump declared the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in US history.
Invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, the law requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.