Latino Business Owners in Milwaukee Receive Anti-Mexican Letters (VIDEO)

Oct 5, 2015
9:41 AM

Latino business owners have received a series of postcards calling for the deportation of all Mexicans.

From Las Vegas’s Action News:

“Americans die for their liberty, their freedom, and their country — not for illegal Mexican trash! Deport all of them! No amnesty! No jobs! No sanctuary!” reads one of the messages. Another shows what appears to be a Latina mother with her child, underneath which reads: “The face of ’30 million’ new Americans, that don’t belong here. Ask Katie Steinle.”

Steinle is the 32-year-old medical saleswoman who was shot to death in San Francisco earlier this year by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a 45-year-old felon who had been deported to Mexico five times. He was detained by the San Francisco County sheriff’s department in March on drug charges, but when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made a request for an immigration detainer to begin Lopez-Sanchez’s deportation for a sixth time, the sheriff’s department refused. San Francisco is a so-called “sanctuary city,” which doesn’t hold suspects wanted by the federal immigration agency.

According to the 1969 Supreme Court case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment so long as the message doesn’t pose an imminent threat or lead to lawbreaking.

Still, the Latino business owners who received the hateful postcards are understandably worried.

“It really bothers me. It’s sending a bad message,” Raul Varela, a Mexican immigrant who owns Fiesta Salon and Spa on the city’s south side, told Milwaukee’s Fox 6 News. Varela has received more than one letter. “This is sending a really bad message and it really makes me feel very, very unsafe.”