Hate Crimes Update: Couple Boycotts Texas Restaurant Because 'The Owner Is Mexican'

The owner of an Italian restaurant in San Antonio, Texas, said he was worried about the political climate in the U.S. after a customer left a note on the back of a receipt saying he or she wouldn’t be returning to the restaurant because he was Mexican, according to local reports Monday.

A copy of the receipt is being shared on social media. Owner Fernando Franco, who is from Mexico City, said the message was a byproduct of the rhetoric surrounding the November presidential campaign, where President Donald Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers.

“The food was tasty and the service was attentive. However, the owner is ‘Mexican.’ We will not return. ‘America First,” the handwritten note reads.

Franco was having lunch with his wife Friday when the manager notified him about the racist letter. He was told the note was left by a couple that had just exited the restaurant he’s owned for more than a year now.

"Something like this is a slap in the face,” Franco told local reporters. “You feel a little bit disappointed. A little bit like, you don’t know exactly how to react.”

Franco owns two other restaurants in Mexico, and is permitted to live and work in the U.S. under an E-2 visa. He said he plans on keeping the receipt to remind himself about the prevalence of racism in the country.

There were 701 reported incidents of hate crimes in the week following Trump’s presidential election, according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Anti-Latino hate crimes in cities that have large Mexican communities like Los Angeles increased from 36 in 2014 to 61 in 2015, according to the latest Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations report from last year.