A Dana Point bar is under fire after their Cinco de Mayo celebration is accused of "blatant and casual racism".
Laycee Barragato Gibson says she was in town visiting her parents when an old high school friend called her, saying she wouldn't believe what was happening at Hennessey's bar.
The tavern was preparing for the day's celebration by setting up an inflatable climbing wall.
If you made it over, you'd be rewarded with a free drink coupon....modeled after a green card.
The card came complete with a new name, country of birth listed as Mexico and saying the holder's citizenship status was in progress.
Barragato Gibson posted the photos she took to Facebook and the word spread from there.
“I thought, ‘You’re pulling my leg! No way a business would do this!'...I wanted to deter people from going...but who knows? Maybe I just encouraged them.”
The bar owner Paul Hennessey wrote on his Facebook wall saying he never intended to make fun of illegal immigrants or Mexicans.
“Our intentions were to create a dialogue and show how ridiculous that it is to spend tens of millions of dollars to build a wall and even infer that Mexico foot some or the entire bill and have their citizens build it. This event obviously struck a chord with many of you out there and you and a number of you did not understand our intent. I encourage all of you to take the time that you have spent posting on social media to spend an equal or greater amount of time writing your congressman or the president himself to express your concerns just as I have.”
People weren't satisfied with his explanation, many saying he was just trying to push off the criticism.
Dave Lieberman says Hennessey just tried to double down on his actions.
“It wasn’t put there as a statement of how stupid the wall is; it was a stupid decision made while planning the Mexican-themed version of St. Patrick’s Day in a bar patronized almost exclusively by non-Latinos...it’s the Trump-era version of stupid send-ups of sombreros and women dressing like Carmen Miranda.
Georgina Verdugo also wrote that his spin on this event was "ridiculous".
“Giving away free drinks and ‘green cards’ to participants of an insulting stunt is supposed to ‘create a dialogue’ regarding border enforcement and targeting Latinos?”