Continuing with the absurd politics of a Mexican Presidents’ desperation to keep Mexicans from returning to Mexico:

… President Enrique Peña Nieto recently budgeted about $50 million to the country’s 50 consulates to help pay the costs of defending migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and facing deportation. –LINK–

A bizarre, albeit understandable policy, given the dependency on the Mexican economy created by $25 billion in remittances sent home from Mexican nationals illegally living/working in the U.S.

PHOENIX — All but one of about 50 undocumented Mexican migrants [ie. illegal aliens] at a meeting Saturday indicated they would rather risk detention and long court battles in the U.S. than return to Mexico voluntarily.
The majority of migrants at the meeting in Phoenix, which included Mexican officials, signaled in a show of hands that they were ready to fight deportation in U.S. courts.
President Enrique Peña Nieto recently budgeted about $50 million to the country’s 50 consulates to help pay the costs of defending migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and facing deportation.
[…] Some Mexican officials are worried that President Donald Trump has decided to expand the type of undocumented migrants who are at risk of being deported, from the violent or dangerous people that the Obama administration targeted to migrants who have had minor brushes with law enforcement.
Mr. Trump on Sunday called it a “crackdown on illegal criminals,” adding in an early morning tweet that “Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!” (more)

The crackdown on illegal criminals is merely the keeping of my campaign promise. Gang members, drug dealers & others are being removed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2017

In 2015 we predicted if Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the Southern Border and Security Wall would not only happen as a construct of following through on a promise, but also factually happen as a function of avoiding the crisis of a neighboring economy in complete collapse.
What underpins that prediction is the hidden scale, and almost unquantifiable scope, of the exfiltration of U.S. dollars -legal and illegal- into Mexico.
American taxpayers as voters have no idea of the scale for how much money flows out of the U.S. into Mexico.  The reason no-one knows about it, and the reason economists cannot discuss it, is because the answer reveals a politically inconvenient discussion.
If accurate quantification was ever given sunlight, Americans, or more accurately ‘tax-paying Americans‘ would be able to see how much the United States actually subsidizes the nation of Mexico, and how much we’ve been ripped off.

…”this is what’s happening because our leaders are stupid, our politicians are stupid, …And the Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning.”

~ Candidate Donald Trump

While the actual valuation of the outflow of dollars into Mexico is unknown, there are indicators it could be greater than our current economic trade deficit with China, $500+ billion.
Only a few indicators have ever reached visibility.  One such indicator being the outbound U.S. Western Union wire transfers, remittances, which now exceed the entire Mexican Energy Sector (oil and gas) combined.
An honest evaluation of all possible currency transfer streams puts the outflow well over several hundred billion per year. Well over.
Truthfully, no-one can even comprehend the scale or scope of the peso dependency based on the dollar imports. It is simply an immeasurable quantification known only to someone who would have access to extensive internal data like Mexico’s Central Bank Chief, Mr. Agustin Carstens.
How many illicit pallets of U.S. dollars actually cross the southern border?  No-one really knows that either.  However, the scale of fraudulent U.S. treasury tax refunds to Mexican nationals is an order of magnitude greater than the quantifiable Western Union transfers.

“We’re talking about a multi-billion dollar fraud scheme here that’s taking place and no one is talking about it,” he said. The scheme involves illegal immigrants — illegal immigrants who are filing tax returns. (read much more)

Three stories, three economic red flags, which flew under the radar for most economically minded followers.

• Mexico’s Central Banker, Agustin Carstens, ‘unexpectedly’ quit – SEE HERE
• The Peso is rapidly depreciating, and Mexican Inflation is beginning to lurch.
• Mexico’s Finance Minister, Jose Antonio Meade, watches nervously as state controlled gasoline price setting is removed in favor of free market prices. – SEE HERE

(2016 Mexico)  […]  The move will phase out government-set gasoline prices, a practice that has prevailed in Mexico for decades, and replace them with market prices.
The change is one of the most tangible parts of a landmark energy reform program in Mexico, which in 2013 ended the 75-year monopoly of state oil company Pemex over nearly all facets of the sector, from crude production to retail fuel sales.
In April [2016], Mexico allowed private companies to import fuels for the first time, nine months ahead of what the energy reform program originally stipulated.  Gasoline prices in Mexico are higher than in the United States, where market prices prevail, and Pemex loses about $3 billion a year importing gasoline into Mexico.  (read more)

There’s more than just economic patriotism behind Ford Motor Company’s decision to cancel the $1.7 billion expenditure in Mexico.   Corporations use actuarial analysis as part of the entire Risk Management 5-year corporate forecast.
Mexico’s economy is beginning to do a bit more than tremor; and with an American business titan and patriotic political reformer taking office in the White House,… who campaigned on an absolute promise to renegotiate NAFTA, and the DC legislative priorities necessarily following the executive office expectation…. well, Mr. Carstens didn’t need to be an astrologist to note his place in the universe amid the economic planetary alignment.

….It begins like this:

MEXICO CITY –  Sometimes-violent protests and looting over gasoline price hikes in Mexico are continuing and officials say that so far they’ve left one policeman dead and five injured, 300 stores looted and over 600 people arrested.
The country’s business chambers says the combination of highway, port and terminal blockades and looting have forced many stores and businesses to close and threaten supplies of basic goods and fuel.
Mexicans were enraged by the 20-percent fuel price hike announced over the weekend as part of a government deregulation effort.
Since then, protesters have blockaded highways and gas stations and looting has broken out in some places.  Authorities said Thursday that one policeman was run over and killed and another seriously injured when they tried to stop robberies from a gas station in Mexico City.  (read more)

…. Do you still think that Mexico has leverage in the conversation about the Southern Border Security Wall.  Any leverage at all…?

In a stunning segment last month on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN broadcast Mexico’s former foreign minister, Jorge Castaneda, an admitted communist ideologue, states the Mexican government is willing to counter U.S. President Donald Trump policy by unleashing drug cartels upon the U.S. border.
Watch, and more importantly LISTEN, to his words at 02:10 below:

This was the backdrop for the current Mexican immigration headlines.  Factually that admission was the latest in a series of politically explosive admissions by the Mexican government.  Even avowed open-border globalist Fareed Zakaria realized what was being threatened and quickly attempted to redirect the conversation.
Castaneda is openly admitting a willingness to promote drug trafficking. Additionally, Jorge Castaneda is so proud of the threat, he even posted a video of the discussion on his own YouTube page.
The implications here are so politically explosive, and the admission so brutally obvious and threatening, it could undermine the argument of the Mexican government and expose an open secret of collusion they would prefer to remain hidden.  Alas, the ideological U.S. media will never cover such a story and the implications therein.
Another excellent expose’ written in December of 2016 outlines the strategy of Castaneda as it pertains to fighting Donald Trumps efforts. –SEE HERE–
Castaneda not only threatens to send drugs, he also threatens to flood the United States with illegal South Americans and openly admits Mexico could stop the border crossings if it wanted to, but instead chooses to use immigration as a weapon against the United States.
(Via VDare) […] He openly states Mexico should use Central American immigration as a weapon against us [Mexico can use Central-American immigration as bargaining chip with Trump, Univision, December 8, 2016]:

There has been a surge in Central American immigrants heading for the United States since Donald Trump won the Election in November, according to several initial reports… If this is the case, it is only logical. Trump has vowed to build his wall. It does not matter if Mexico will pay for it or even if the threat is true. It makes perfect sense for anybody hoping to make it to the United States, from Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala, to do so before any wall is put up….If they have relatives in the United States, or if they think that their reception will be better with President Barack Obama still in power until January 20, then their decision is perfectly rational.

Castaneda recounts how during the Surge of 2014, the Obama Administration pressured Mexico:

When the first wave of unaccompanied minors came to the United States in July 2014, Mexico complied with the White House request to cooperate in stopping the flow of immigrants. The logic behind it was sound. The goal was to avoid sparking anti-immigrant hysteria in the United States precisely when immigration reform seemed set to prosper.

By “hysteria,” Castaneda means provoking Americans who want a sane American immigration policy. (read more)