A Construction Worker Stuck It To Trump By Flying A Mexican Flag On Vancouver's Trump Tower

    Diego Reyna was protesting Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants.

    Ishmael N. Daro
    by Ishmael N. Daro

    BuzzFeed Staff, Canada

    A construction worker snuck up to the top of Vancouver's Trump Tower to hang a Mexican flag. Diego Reyna said he was protesting Donald Trump's insulting comments about Mexican immigrants, and to show Trump benefits from the same people he insults.

    Diego Reyna / Via facebook.com

    "WHY DID I PUT A MEXICAN FLAG ON THE ROOF TOP OF TRUMP TOWER VANCOUVER ?????? Because from the concrete pouring, finishing, drywall, taping, wood forming and general labour, Mexicans were there, building it,

    doing good work," Reyna wrote on Facebook.

    "The comments Trump has made about us did not stop us from doing the high quality work we have always done, in our home country or when we migrate to the US/Canada."

    Trump, who is a mendacious racist, launched his presidential campaign by describing Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.

    Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press

    Although Trump's name will be on the new building in Vancouver, set to open this summer, the developer behind the project is Canadian.

    Vancouver's mayor has asked the developer to drop Trump's name, and a poll in December showed a majority of Canadians agreed.

    Reyna told BuzzFeed Canada that he and a friend dressed in their construction gear and talked their way past security. They took the elevator 20 storeys up, and then walked up the stairs for the remaining 43 floors of the unfinished building.

    Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver Hotel / Via trumpvancouver.com

    Reyna said the view of Vancouver from the top of the tower was so beautiful it looked "like CGI from a futuristic science fiction movie," but he had no time to waste. After hanging the flag and taking the photo, he and his accomplice took the stairs all the way down.

    They encountered locked doors along the way and had to find their way down to ground level through trial and error, but they managed to leave before anyone noticed.

    Reyna didn't work on the Vancouver Trump tower himself, but he knows many people who did, including many immigrants.

    Diego Reyna / Facebook

    He is originally from Tuxtla Gutiérrez in southern Mexico and lives in Vancouver now. He said Trump's influence had hurt "everyone I love," including his friends and family.

    “There are many people who have never been to Mexico or never met a Mexican, and there’s this gentleman who is telling them we are all criminals," he said.

    He said he was happy with the reaction his protest was getting.

    "For the most part people are getting the point. This gentleman is putting an entire ethnic group under a negative label. And I am willing to do this for any group that has been [insulted] like this.”