During a somewhat surprising recent interview with the New York Post, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman said that he is “not woke” and is against the sort of laws that allow squatters to take over properties and force the property owners into lengthy legal battles to get them evicted.
His comments came after a series of high-profile squatting cases, including an illegal immigrant going viral on TikTok for telling other illegal immigrants how to squat. Though that illegal immigrant was eventually detained by ICE, numerous squatting horror stories have continued to crop up around the nation, even in red states like Texas.
In the New York Post interview, Sen. Fetterman explained that squatting was a problem he often had to deal with when he was the mayor of Braddock, a working-class down in Pennsylvania. He expressed disdain for squatters and their attempt to bend the law to their advantage by lying about their rights in a piece of property, saying he was resolutely against that.
Saying as much to the New York Post, Fetterman, who insisted “I am not woke,” said, “Squatters have no rights.” Continuing, he sounded off on the idea that taking over someone’s home is anything other than an illegal taking over of property, saying, “How can you even pretend that this is anything other than you’re just breaking the law?” He added, “We always tried to push back against that,
Sen. Fetterman then expressed shock at the idea that, just because someone broke into your home while you were away on a trip and so unable to check in on things and make sure no one was illegally living in it, the squatter should be able to claim rights in that property. “It’s wild, that if you go away on a long trip, for 30 days, and someone breaks into your home and suddenly they have rights,” he said.
Giving an example to help explain why he thinks the laws protecting squatters are utterly absurd and a violation of property rights, Sen. Fetterman then added, “This is crazy. Like if somebody stole your car, and then they held it for 30 days, then somehow you now have some rights?”
Sen. Fetterman’s thoughts on the matter were surprisingly similar to those of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who recently signed a bill that makes it far easier for homeowners to have illegal immigrants removed from their property. Watch him discuss that bill here:
During the same interview, Sen. Fetterman tore into soft-on-crime policies in cities like New York, arguing that individuals who pose a threat to society should be held accountable and locked up rather than allowed to break the law again and again and again without any punishment. Those remarks came in the context of the murder of NYPD Detective Jonathan Diller. “I have gone to police funerals,” Sen. Fetterman said.
Continuing, he explained that cop-killers like the murderer of Detective Diller should be locked up for good and never given the opportunity to kill again, saying, “If this individual is convicted, then he should spend the rest of his life in prison, and never have an opportunity to get out.”
He continued, explaining that repeated offenders need to be dealt with differently: “If you have those kinds of established records, it doesn’t serve any greater goal to allow people that are offending, offending, offending and allow them to not be held accountable.” “We have to be very smart and aggressive on crime,” he added.
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