A Latino family said they were harassed at a Texas Rangers game by a fan who said President Trump should “hurry up and build the wall” at Globe Live Park in Arlington, Texas last Saturday — the same day as the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas left 22 people dead, most of them Latinos.
According to a Facebook post from Jessica Romero, she and her family were taking a picture in their stadium seats when they heard a man say “let me see how I can f-ck up their pic.”
Romero didn’t realize that the man was referring to her and her family until she discovered that he lifted his middle finger in the background of their picture.
“He made it perfectly clear during the second inning that he is not a fan of Hispanics," Romero wrote in her post, which has since received more than 100,000 reactions and has been shared more than 76,000 times. "And he just so happened to have a Hispanic family [us] sitting in front of him and another one sitting directly behind him.”
As the innings wore on, the man’s comments became increasingly hostile while he expressed his disdain for Latinos, Romero said.
“During the second inning the little boy behind him who looked to be about Nomar's [her son] age kicked the back of his chair. And for the next three innings I had to hear him complain about all the illegal immigrants that were surrounding him at the game,” Romero wrote. “That he should kick little Speedy Gonzalez all the way back to Mexico for kicking his seat. That Trump needs to hurry and build the wall and send all these illegals back so they won't be kicking his seat."
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The Rangers said in a statement provided to the Dallas Morning News that they have reached out to the Romero family and are investigating the incident.
"The Rangers are committed to providing all of our guests with a safe and enjoyable experience and we are truly sorry that this family was subjected to this offensive behavior at Saturday's game," the club said in a statement. "There is no place at Globe Life Park in Arlington for this type of conduct to occur.”
Ramon Romero, Jessica’s husband, told the Morning News that the couple has held 10-game mini-plans for the Rangers for approximately 10 years, but that they choose to attend Saturday’s game at the last minute so their son could get a Rusty Greer bobblehead.
“I was just in shock,” Ramon Romero, Jessica’s husband, told the Morning News. “It struck me that he's at a game being played by so many Latinos that maybe we are good enough to play for him, but not good enough to sit near him."
Both the El Paso and Gilroy, California mass shootings — whose perpetrators respectively referenced hatred for Hispanics and mestizos, according to authorities — have put a focus on anti-Hispanic rhetoric and racism.
“Sadly this is not the first or the last time we will ever experience this kind of racism,” Romero wrote in her Facebook post.
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