Violent protests erupted in over 50 cities across Mexico on Saturday. Security fencing was torn down around the National Palace in Mexico City. More than 100 police were injured in clashes with rioters, and about 40 cops were hospitalized.
Some are trying to blame the clashes on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and her administration’s deep ties to the drug cartels. The real culprit behind the riots, however, is President Donald Trump. And no, we’re not being facetious. The riots are Trump’s fault, and they are a very good thing for Mexico and the US.
The protests follow yet another cartel assassination of a mayor in Mexico who has been calling for reform. As many as 60 political candidates were assassinated across the country last year. Sheinbaum’s coddling of the drug cartels is just a symptom of the larger problem that led to this over the weekend:
Warning Graphic Content: https://twitter.com/Julio_Rosas11/status/1989794635296989682
So, how is this President Trump’s fault?
Most of us can articulate the American dream fairly well. We want our kids to grow up in a safe country, to get a good education, and to lead better lives than we did. We want them to get a good education and have successful careers. The American dream has always been aspirational for the next generation.
What is the Mexican dream? Ever think about that?
The Mexican dream is to have your children move away from Mexico and breach an international border. Escape from your corrupt, violent, and unstable home country and go somewhere else. Just don’t forget to send those remittances home!
That is truly perverse. But that’s the Mexican dream.
Mexico’s government has been corrupt for as long as anyone can remember. The country was under a corrupt one-party rule from 1929 until 2000. In the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, Mexico’s score fell to 26/100, making it 140th out of 180 countries.
None of that mattered to the politicians in Mexico, however, because our garbage politicians in America have kept the southern border wide open for the past several decades. The Mexican people have never had to rise up against their own corrupt government, because America’s open border has been their pressure relief valve.
By the time of Donald Trump’s first election in 2016, almost 30% of Mexico’s entire population had moved into the United States. Imagine how many are here now, after the four disastrous years of Joe Biden.
Thanks to President Trump, we now have operational control of the southern border for the first time in American history. No one is getting across.
That has left Mexico’s Generation Z facing the horrifying prospect of… having to live in Mexico. There aren’t enough jobs in Mexico, the people are poor and getting poorer, and they’re directing their anger at President Scheinbaum.
Good!
We’re starting to see the first numbers on remittances, the payments that illegal aliens send back home. Thanks to the ICE raids, remittances to Mexico from California have dropped almost 10% in the past nine months. Remittances from Colorado are down a whopping 36%.
Mexico’s economy is suddenly getting crushed. In Mexico City alone, Mexican families have received $1.6 billion less than they did in 2024. The people are feeling the pinch, so they are finally—at long last—taking to the streets. If things continue to get worse, they may eventually topple their corrupt government.
This would be a great thing for both countries. Mexico is a country that is rich in resources, but the people remain poor because of bad governance. Right now, Mexicans want to come to the US and steal jobs from our kids, which makes us angry. And increasing numbers of Americans want to move to Mexico for retirement because of the lower cost of living (which makes the Mexican people angry).
Imagine if we just wanted to visit each other as tourists, because both countries have better governance. The Mexican people haven’t needed to revolt for many years because they could always escape to the USA. Now that President Trump is back in office, they want a better life for their kids in their own country.
It makes you wonder if that was part of Trump’s plan all along.