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Mexico would pay for the U.S. border wall if the border were redrawn to match the 1830s, when much of the American Southwest belonged to Mexico, the country’s Senate president quipped this week.
Gerardo Fernández Noroña spoke in Spanish in Mexico about the U.S. federal immigration raids in Los Angeles, which have sparked violent riots and protests featuring demonstrators waving Mexican flags on U.S. soil.
Critics, including senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller, have branded scenes of people waving the Mexican flag as evidence Los Angeles is “occupied territory.”
In that regard, Noroña recounted telling President Donald Trump privately in New York in 2017 that Mexico would build and pay for the border wall he wants — under one condition.
Mexican Sen. José Gerardo Rodolfo Fernández Noroña (Screenshot)
“We’ll do it according to the map of Mexico from 1830,” Noroña said, producing a cartogram. “This is what the United States was in 1830, and this was part of Mexico.
“I was at Trump Tower when President-elect Donald Trump said … I said, ‘Yes, we’ll build the wall. Yes we’ll pay for it, but we’ll do it according to the map of Mexico from 1830.”
The cession of that amount of territory would account for at least 48% of the U.S. electoral vote, a standardized measure of population density.
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The member of the left-wing Morena Party lamented that Mexico was “stripped” of about one-third of its territory via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War.
The U.S. won that war but also suffered steep losses, including former Tennessee Rep. Davy Crockett’s last stand at the Alamo.
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The treaty established rights for people who lived in what was Mexican territory that was about to be governed only a few months later in 1849 by President Zachary Taylor, a decorated commander of that war.
“We settled there before the nation now known as the United States,” Noroña said, claiming the treaty was “not respected.”
He claimed disaffected residents of Laredo, Texas, established Nuevo Laredo on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande because they did not want to be Americans.
“With this geography, how can they talk about liberating Los Angeles — and California — the U.S. government; liberate from whom?” he said.
“[For] Mexican men and women, [that has] always been their homeland.”
The top official then claimed Angelenos do not need to know how to speak English because of the historic prevalence of Spanish there.
“This is part of the U.S., yes, and the U.S. government has the right to implement whatever immigration measures it deems appropriate. But they have no right to violate the dignity of migrants … no right to subject them to suffering, persecution and harassment.”
