Mexico's president wants to ban U.S. ads warning against migration

Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times on Apr 21, 2025

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MEXICO CITY — Mexico's president said Monday that her government has asked television stations to pull a commercial produced by the Trump administration warning against undocumented migration to the United States.

Calling the ad "discriminatory," President Claudia Sheinbaum also vowed to send legislation to Congress that would ban the commercial and others that are similar.

In the ad, which has aired periodically on major TV stations here, including during the broadcast of two major soccer games over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem shares a message that she says comes from President Trump.

"If you are considering entering America illegally, don't even think about it," Noem says in English, her words translated beneath her. "If you come to our country and break our laws, we will hunt you down. Criminals are not welcome in the United States."

The commercial, whose 60-second version features images of migrants running across the border, a bag of what appears to be cocaine or fentanyl and a barrage of police headshots of Latino, Black and Asian men, has sparked an outcry in Mexico.

A government agency tasked with preventing discrimination received so many complaints that it sent a letter to broadcasters last week asking them to remove the ad, which it said "contains a discriminatory message, violates human dignity, and may encourage acts of violence" against migrants.

Sheinbaum, who addressed the matter at her daily news conference, also said she was sending a bill to Congress that would bar foreign governments from purchasing commercials that insult Mexico.

"If a city in a country wants to promote its tourism, its culture, that's a very different thing from a paid advertisement that disseminates discriminatory messages," she said.

Sheinbaum and Noem discussed migration and drug trafficking in Mexico City last month during a meeting that the president described as "beneficial."

Amid Trump's on-again, off-again threats to levy devastating tariffs on imported Mexican goods, Sheinbaum has scrambled to appease him on a variety of fronts, including migration.

Crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border have fallen to their lowest levels in years, thanks in part to the Mexican National Guard troops Sheinbaum has stationed there, and her government's policy to to keep U.S.-bound migrants in southern Mexico.

Many transnational migrants were stranded in Mexico when Trump took office and announced an end to asylum at the border. As a result, asylum applications in Mexico have surged.

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(Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in The Times' Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.)

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