Man loses job, banned from Waste Management Open after racist rant goes viral

Anti-immigrant sentiment has been on the rise in word and deed since President Donald Trump first took office in 2016, but community advocates in Arizona say there’s been a noticeable shift to targeting Latinos regardless of legal status.

Just last week, a group of young women filmed a man at the Waste Management Phoenix Open who launched into a racist rant about Mexican immigrants, originally reported by 12News. Instead of shying away from the camera, the man—identified as Brandtbert Brudenell—asked them to bring the camera in closer so he could proudly present his derogatory viewpoints.

“Oh, Mexicans? You want to know something about Mexicans?,” Brudenell said. “You [expletive] [expletive] should be sliced at the throat at the border.”

The video was posted online, where it quickly made its way to Brudenell’s’s employer, the home security company Vivint. Vivint announced they terminated Brudenell’s employment in the comments of—and as a result of—the video, calling his behavior “abhorrent” and not representative of the brand.

A spokesperson for the Waste Management Phoenix Open said in a statement to The Copper Courier that the tournament has a “zero tolerance policy for hate speech” and has banned the individual from future events.

Not an isolated incident

While Brudenell quickly faced consequences from both Waste Management Open and his former employer, his hateful rhetoric is reflective of a rising trend in both anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-immigrant legislation.

José Patiño, vice president of education and external affairs at advocacy group Aliento, said that while Trump helped normalize anti-immigrant rhetoric when he first took office in 2016, his current rhetoric is “worse” and dehumanizes Latinos in general instead of only unauthorized ones.

“We’re having a conversation now about whether a group of individuals is human and entitled to human rights. That’s a different conversation than immigration status,” said José Patiño. “One of the things that people don’t talk about, especially if you don’t come from a marginalized community or an immigrant group or a minority or traditionally underserved community, is that words matter.”

Immigration was a key issue in the 2024 presidential election, with Kamala Harris shifting right to a more hard-line stance, and Trump ramping up his “migrant invasion” rhetoric. Over eight in 10 polled voters described it as a “serious problem,” a viewpoint that likely helped to secure victory for Trump.

According to research conducted by the League of United Latin American Citizens, anti-immigrant proposals surged by 357% in state legislatures since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s been a strategic, constant stream of attacks and bile that some people have been emboldened,” Patiño told The Copper Courier.”Regular people, I think their support for our community has decreased because of that.”

Is hate speech a constitutional right?

The First Amendment generally protects hate speech against immigrants as free expression, but there are notable exceptions.

According to James Weinstein, the chair of constitutional law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, going up to someone face-to-face whom you perceive as an immigrant and “hurling racial epithets” at them would not be legally protected, while marching in a public park at a rally holding a sign bearing the same epithets against immigrants would be.

“They’re not ‘fighting words’ under the First Amendment exception to free speech because they’re not face-to-face,” Weinstein said, noting that it applies to private speech rather than public speech.

Another exception to First Amendment protections is words that cause incitement, one that is difficult to prove in court. According to Weinstein, an individual shouting in a public park to burn down synagogues or lynching people of color isn’t enough to qualify as incitement, which requires words that embolden people to break the law and have a clear intent to commit violence.

Editor’s Note: A quote cited in a previous version of this article has been removed for clarity.