Mexican Soccer Star Miguel Layún Calls Out TOYS ‘R’ US for Displaying Border Wall at Portugal Store

Feb 26, 2017
11:36 AM

Miguel Layún is a star defender for the Mexican national soccer team. He also plays professionally for FC Porto, a club out of Portugal. On Saturday, Layún posted this tweet from his account:

The tweet says the following in English: “Sad to see this type of decoration at the ToysRUs in Gaia [Vila Nova de Gaia is a city directly to the south of Porto]. We chose to leave after seeing this ‘joke.'”

Layún’s photo showed a toy wall with signs that read “Mexico” and “USA.”

As you might imagine, the tweet got some attention, to the point that the New Jersey-based @ToysRUs has been playing damage control ever since Layún’s tweet got global attention:

After being informed that the Gaia store had removed the display, Layún tweeted a video in Spanish where he hoped that no one lost their job over this tweet, and he thanked ToysRUs for their quick response in removing the wall:

“The idea is to communicate respect,” Layún said in Spanish. “To communicate that it is a very touchy topic that is affecting and generating difficult problems for many people. This is not a topic that people should play around with. I hope that it helps to create more awareness about it. That was the only true motive. I hope that it helped serve notice and that we keep supporting because the last thing we need is this world is more inciting of violence. That was all I wanted to do with my message.”