Mexico is calling on broadcasters to ban a series of Department of Homeland Security ads that feature Secretary Kristi Noem dissuading migrants from illegally crossing the border into the United States.
The ads, which aired during a Mexican soccer game, showed men being put in handcuffs and placed in police cars and migrants crossing the dangerous Rio Grande and scaling the border wall.
“If you are considering entering America illegally, don’t even think about it,” Noem said in the ad. “If you come to our country and you break our laws, we will hunt you down. Criminals are not welcome.”
Following the ad’s airing, a Mexican government agency released a statement urging broadcasters to stop showing the ad, KTLA 5 reported.
“We have found in our analysis that the TV spot has a discriminatory message that places human dignity in jeopardy and could encourage rejection and violence against migrants,” agency officials wrote in a letter. “We invite you to remove the spot so we can continue to construct a society free of discrimination, as our constitution mandates.”
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has been working with President Donald Trump in combating the fentanyl trade, called the advertisement during a Monday news conference “propaganda.”
“We don’t want any foreign government or entity to pay, because they are paying, to promote these ads, this propaganda that has a discriminatory message,” Sheinbaum said.
The advertisement campaign will cost the U.S. government $200 million over the next two years.
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Noem shared at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February that Trump wanted her to show her face in the ad campaigns and thank him for closing the border.
Since Trump’s first administration, cracking down on illegal immigration has been a top priority. The second Trump administration has vowed to deport illegal immigrants en masse, having organized deportation flights of alleged MS-13 gang affiliates to El Salvador. However, a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s migrant flights, and the Supreme Court affirmed the judge’s ruling.