Mexican Senate president highlights western U.S. was once Mexico while denouncing deportations

Mexican Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña on Monday highlighted that his country once owned California, Texas, and much of the United States' western territories while defending the Spanish-speaking people who live there amid ongoing deportation efforts.

While he conceded that the U.S. had the right to enforce its immigration policies, he was adamantly that Mexicans had an ancestral tie to the land and the government must respect the rights of immigrants within its borders.

"Names don't lie. The most spoken language in Los Angeles is Spanish," he insisted. "The United States government has the right to implement whatever immigration measures it deems appropriate, certainly, but they have no right to violate the dignity of immigrants. They have no right to separate families."

He then recalled a 2017 conversation with President Donald Trump in which he told him "[w]e'll build the wall and pay for it. But we'll do it according to the 1830 map of Mexico," he said. "Mexicans were settled in these territories before the U.S. The Mexicans living there are in what has always been their homeland."

"Laredo was a Mexican city," he said. "We were stripped of these territories."

Fernandez made the remarks amid ongoing riots in Los Angeles over deportations that have seen violent demonstrators clash with law enforcement while waving Mexican flags.