Since starting his presidential campaign, GOP front-runner Donald Trump has made the notion of a wall separating the U.S. and Mexico as one of the cornerstones of his policies. Though he has frequently referred to the planned wall in his campaign speeches, he has been pretty vague about how exactly he plans to implement the project, except that he would force Mexico to pay for it.
That is, until now. In a recent memo, Trump finally provided an outline on how he plans to build the wall at Mexico's expense. Trump's grand plan involves a very notable step: cutting off a portion of funds sent to the Latin American country through money transfers such as Western Union through a provision in the U.S.A. Patriot Act.
Of course, doing so would surely, severely cripple the weakening economy of the Latin American country. In order to prevent such catastrophic economic results, Trump stated in his memo that all Mexico needs to do is to make a "one-time payment of $5-10 billion" to pay for the border wall.
Other sanctions proposed by Trump include trade tariffs and the cancellation of visas among Latinos in America.
For Trump, the choices are clear for Mexico. Either cripple the economy by blocking money transfers to the nation or pay up. As much as the proposal exudes bravado on the part of the GOP candidate, Trump's plan has immediately been clamped down by critics.
Among the most vocal critics of Trump's plan came from the country's current president himself, Barack Obama, who stated that the notion of tracking and blocking every single money transfer coming from the U.S. and going to Mexico would be highly impractical and counter-productive.
"This is just one more example of something that is not thought through and is primarily put forward for political consumption. The notion that we're going to track every Western Union bit of money that's being sent to Mexico, good luck with that," Obama said.
Cristóbal Alex, president of the Latino Victory Fund, also stated that the idea is very unrealistic and downright dangerous.
"This is nothing but another attack against immigrants that would have devastating consequences for Latinos and Americans overall, endangering our economy, our democracy, our foreign policy and security," he said.
Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, believes that enacting Trump's proposal would be challenging from a judicial standpoint, as well.
"Trump is giving an extremely broad definition of this section of the Patriot Act and what it allows, and it'd surely be litigated. It would be a large expansion beyond what the text reads," he said.
