Mexico president slams xenophobia after anti-gentrification protest
Friday's rally in Mexico City turned violent, with some of the several hundred protesters vandalizing businesses including a Starbucks coffee shop.
Others held signs saying "Gringo go home" or demanding that foreigners speak Spanish, pay taxes and respect Mexican culture.
"The xenophobic displays at this demonstration must be condemned," Sheinbaum said at her morning news conference.
Protesters complained that an influx of remote workers and other foreigners since the Covid pandemic had driven up rent prices and displaced Mexicans, a phenomenon known as gentrification.
As they passed street-side restaurants, some demonstrators heckled foreign diners, who either ignored them or left.
Sheinbaum, who was Mexico City mayor from 2018 to 2023, called the motive for the protest legitimate but rejected calls for foreigners to leave.
The leftist leader linked the rise in rents to the arrival of "digital nomads," many of them from the United States, as well as real estate speculation connected to online rental platforms such as Airbnb.
Mexico is home to one-fifth of the five million expatriates counted by the Association of Americans Resident Overseas in 2023.
The march came as US President Donald Trump intensifies his crackdown against undocumented immigrants in the United States.
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Trump Is Right to Target Cartels—Mexico Can't Handle the Job
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Beyond his legal authority to act lies the moral imperative at play. Over 100,000 Americans died from drug-involved overdoses in 2023 alone—casualties of a drug war Mexico is not capable of waging effectively. These cartels don't simply smuggle drugs; they operate as quasi-governmental entities controlling approximately a third of the Mexico's territory through assassination, terror, and brute force. They've turned massive portions of Mexico into narco-states where rule of law has completely collapsed. President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum gestures during the daily morning briefing at Palacio Nacional on Aug. 6, 2025, in Mexico City, Mexico. President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum gestures during the daily morning briefing at Palacio Nacional on Aug. 6, 2025, in Mexico City, response to this crisis has been institutional failure. 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Decades of counter-narcotics cooperation, billions in aid, and endless diplomatic initiatives have only resulted in more sophisticated cartels and deadlier drugs flooding American streets. When cooperation fails and the threat continues to metastasize, military action becomes not only justified but necessary. Mexico can object to American military operations on its soil—as it has already—but their objections don't change the fundamental calculus. Cartels have effectively declared war on both our countries, and Mexico has proven incapable of fighting back effectively. The moral obligation to protect American lives ultimately supersedes diplomatic niceties about sovereignty, particularly when that sovereignty exists more in theory than in practice. This is exactly the kind of decisive action that American leadership requires. While critics debate legal technicalities, cartels continue flooding our communities with fentanyl and turning Mexican cities into war zones. 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