Mexico moves to ban Noem ads on illegal migration - The Boston Globe (2025)

In Mexico, it’s been blasted by politicians across the ideological spectrum, including President Claudia Sheinbaum. In the past three months, the leftist leader has sought to satisfy many of President Trump’s demands on curbing migration and the flow of illegal fentanyl. Trump in turn has called her “a wonderful woman” and made concessions on tariffs.

Now, though, at Sheinbaum’s urging, Mexico’s Congress is expected to fast-track a law that would outlaw transmission of the ads on major TV and radio channels — in addition to other foreign government “propaganda.”

“Mexico stands for diversity, inclusion, and rights,” Sheinbaum told reporters this week. “Our sovereignty must be respected.”

So far, the commercials have been broadcast in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, in addition to the United States. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, said plans call for the ads to air in Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, and Portuguese, on broadcast and digital channels, including Spanish-language Telemundo and Univision.

McLaughlin said the ad campaign was working.

“The data shows the world is hearing our message. Border crossings have reached the lowest ever recorded,” she said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Migrants are turning back before they even reach our borders.”

Border arrests reached a record high in 2023, before plummeting during the last year of the Biden administration. Analysts credited tougher US asylum restrictions and stepped-up enforcement in Mexico and Panama for the decline. Detentions of illegal border-crossers have further tumbled since Trump took office.

This is not the first time the Department of Homeland Security has launched a publicity campaign to discourage migrants from crossing the border. In 2022, the Biden administration paid for a digital ad program aimed at migrants from Honduras and Guatemala. It was called “Say No to the Coyote,” and focused on how smugglers trick and abuse migrants.

The current commercials, however, look more like political ads. They feature video of Trump giving speeches, signing orders and saluting military officers. In a voice-over for one ad, Noem asserts that the United States previously had “weak leadership” on the border, “flooding our communities with drugs, human trafficking, and violent criminals.”

“It is more political messaging than we’ve seen in the past, to have a secretary there, and giving so much credit to the president,” said Kate Mills, a former senior ICE official in the Obama administration.

Immigration analysts and former officials — including those from Republican administrations — have said that ads to deter migration are largely ineffective, with border-crossers making their decisions based on their chances of reaching the United States, getting jobs, and escaping poverty and violence in their homelands.

The new US ad campaign “is a perfect example of wasteful government spending that DOGE should cut,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

McLaughlin has said that the ads are intended to save money by convincing people to self-deport.

Noem said earlier this year that Trump had instructed her on how to fashion the campaign.

“He said: ‘I want you in the ads, and I want your face in the ads,’” Noem recalled at the Conservative Political Action Conference, adding that Trump told her for the first ad: “I want you to thank me for closing the border.”

The commercials started running in Mexico several weeks ago on YouTube, according to Mexican press reports. But they only grabbed the political spotlight last weekend, when one ad aired during a prime-time match between Mexican soccer league champion Club América and the Mazatlán team broadcast by the country’s top network, Televisa.

In the ad, Noem thanked Trump for his border crackdown and told immigrants: “If you come here and you break our laws, we will hunt you down.” The ad was in English, with Spanish subtitles.

Mexico is both a key partner in detaining US-bound migrants from Central and South America, and a major source itself of undocumented laborers crossing the border. Mexican politicians routinely lavish praise on the hard-working “paisanos” in the north, who send back nearly $65 billion a year to help their families.

After Saturday night’s soccer match, Mexican opposition politicians seized on what they called an insulting portrayal of migrants in the DHS ad, and accused Sheinbaum of failing to defend her citizens.

“Where is the diplomatic note? Where is the response via international law? Why didn’t we recall the Mexican ambassador to Washington?” demanded Rubén Moreira, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the lower house of Congress.

Sheinbaum told reporters that the US ads were “discriminatory,” and pledged a new law prohibiting foreign “propaganda” in media that use public airwaves. Her party, Morena, holds an overwhelming majority in Congress and is expected to swiftly pass the measure.

Until now, Sheinbaum has maintained a balancing act with Trump, trying to placate him while publicly insisting he respect Mexico. She’s sent thousands more Mexican troops to the border to halt illegal migration and fentanyl shipments, and transferred 29 high-level drug traffickers to the United States in a dramatic operation in February.

With the ads, however, she balked.

“President Sheinbaum has acceded to almost everything Trump has asked of her. At the same time, she’s maintained a narrative of [Mexico’s] sovereignty, of respect, that they [the Trump team] treat us well,” said Martha Bárcena, a former Mexican ambassador to Washington. The Noem commercials “appeared to undercut this narrative about sovereignty.”

Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, deputy director of the international program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said that such deterrence campaigns have historically produced few results because the government is not viewed as a neutral actor. In addition, Noem’s message provides few alternatives to migrants who had considered entering or leaving the United States.

“The issue is, there is very little trust between the migrant community and the Trump administration,” Banulescu-Bogdan said. The ads focus on the administration’s priorities, she said — “so there’s actually very little here in terms of new information for migrants themselves.”

LeVine and Schaffer reported from Washington.