Queens DA staffer tried to make a bomb to blow up migrant shelter: police

A paralegal at a New York City district attorney’s office has been arrested after he attempted to make an explosive to bomb a migrant shelter located across from his apartment, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday.

Police said Derek Klever, a 27-year-old who worked as a trial preparation assistant at the Queens District Attorney’s office, had grown frustrated with partying at the Kamway Lodge in Elmhurst, a small hostel that the city has been using to temporarily house migrants arriving from the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

“I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s for Queens County,” he said, according to the court filing. “This is a war. I wish I had a big enough one to blow them back to Venezuela.”

Klever confided to an unnamed acquaintance that he had purchased fireworks and was going to combine their contents with nails, gasoline and other materials to create rudimentary explosives.

Read more: NBC New York