Election 2016: Mexico City Votes To Ban Donald Trump From Country

Mexico City lawmakers want to ban Donald Trump from their country. The city’s Legislative Assembly voted Wednesday to make a formal request to the federal government to keep the Republican presidential candidate out of Mexico, the Huffington Post reported.

The vote is largely symbolic because the legislature has no authority to enforce such a ban, but lawmakers said they were upset with Trump’s anti-Mexican comments and wanted to take a stand. Since he began his presidential bid last summer, Trump has called Mexican immigrants rapists and repeatedly said he will force Mexico to pay for the construction of a wall along the country’s border with the United States. Before voting on the proposal, legislators questioned why there had not been a federal response to Trump and said they wanted President Enrique Peña Nieto to confront the White House hopeful.

“What we're saying is that if he wants to build a wall so that Mexicans can't enter his country, then he is not welcome in our country,” deputy José Manuel Delgadillo of the conservative National Action Party told the Huffington Post. “What we need now is for President Peña Nieto to make a strong statement condemning Mr. Trump's anti-Mexican comments.”

Deputy Víctor Hugo Romo, who introduced the resolution, described Trump as “primeval, egocentral and primitive,” according to Noticias MVS, and compared the New York businessman to Adolf Hitler.

“Hitler was very popular,” Romo said. “He generated a lot of sympathy by adopting nationalist politics that vindicated the Germans’ sense of self-worth. [Trump] is practically a copy. I consider Donald Trump a chauvinist, a misogynist who fosters and leans toward repression. … He doesn’t respect diversity.”

Last month, former Mexican President Vicente Fox publicly criticized Trump and pushed back against the idea of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. “I'm not going to pay for that f---ing wall. He should pay for it,” Fox said in an interview with Fusion’s Jorge Ramos. Another former Mexican President, Felipe Calderón, also came out against Trump and called him “racist.”

However, the current Mexican government has been less outspoken. Peña Nieto has not commented on Trump, but his Foreign Affairs Secretary Claudia Ruiz has, calling the Republican “racist” and “ignorant.”

Other governments have also discussed banning Trump. Two members of the United Kingdom Parliament last month brought up a measure that would prevent him from entering the U.K.