Homeland Security Kristi Noem was met with a furious online response this week after she posted a video in which she wore a sombrero at a Mexican restaurant as wait staff sang her Happy Birthday in Spanish.
In the clip, posted on November 29, staff remove what appears to be a DHS cap from Noem’s head and put a sombrero on the Trump administration official instead. She claps and laughs and eventually says “gracias” to the staff.
While some of Noem’s followers on Facebook left birthday wishes and praise under the video, the secretary’s post was met with anger in other corners of the internet, where commentators saw the gesture as insensitive and deliberately provocative, given Noem’s leadership of a department that has sent fear through Mexican-American and Spanish-speaking communities across the country with its military-style deportation raids.
TikTok user @edwins.rosary said the video was a reminder of why these are “sad times” to be Hispanic in America right now, and that Noem “dislikes everything that has to do with that sombrero and the language they were singing happy birthday” in.
“You know damn well she is trying to send a message,” he said in a response video. “She is making fun of all the situations that are going on right now.”
“She is mocking the people she has deported,” X user Suzie Rizzio added. “Why did this restaurant allow her in!”
“I wish they would all face the consequences of the atrocities they have all aided in committing but they won’t bro,” Reddit user Alert-Jellyfish wrote of the clip. “This is America.”
“It’s disgusting that the media is asserting Mexican Americans are criminals,” the Department of Homeland Security told The Independent in a statement. “Shameful.”
Donald Trump and his allies have reserved special ire for Mexican immigrants in the U.S.
Trump famously launched his 2016 presidential campaign with a speech saying many Mexican immigrants are “rapists” and “murderers,” and his signature first-term proposal was to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
During the second Trump administration, Homeland Security-affiliated agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have sent masked agents into Spanish-speaking communities across the country to make deportation arrests.
Critics have accused the administration of using appearance, Spanish language, and certain occupations to carry out what amounts to racial and cultural profiling of Latinos, and numerous U.S. citizens have been swept up in the deportation push.
As The Independent has reported, many areas with large Latino populations have gone quiet or seen reduced business and social activity because residents fear being picked up by one of the administration’s raids.
The administration’s immigration agenda has also prompted fierce protests, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has dismissed those flying Mexican flags at demonstrations as “left-wing radicals” who support “illegal alien invaders.”
