Mexico Says It Won’t Pay for Trump’s ’Terrible’ Wall

Local Editor

There is no way Mexico would fund Donald Trump's "terrible" plan to build a wall along its border with the United States if the Republican front-runner wins the US presidential election, the Mexican finance minister said.

Trump - the New York billionaire developer and former reality television star - sparked outrage in Mexico when he vowed to force Latin America's second-largest economy to pay for a wall along the southern US border to stem the flow of illegal immigration and drugs.

In a televised interview late Wednesday, Finance Minister Luis Videgaray categorically rejected the proposal.

"Under no circumstance will Mexico pay for the wall that Mr. Trump is proposing," he said.

"Building a wall between Mexico and the United States is a terrible idea. It is an idea based on ignorance and has no foundation in the reality of North American integration," he added.

Trump had accused Mexico of sending rapists and drug runners across the US border and had vowed to increase fees on some Mexican visas and all border crossing cards as part of a broader plan to force Mexico to pay for the wall.

Former conservative Mexican presidents Felipe Calderon and Vicente Fox had compared Trump to Adolf Hitler while fears of a Trump presidency had helped stoke a spike in the numbers of immigrants trying to enter the US.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team