Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto Selling Country ‘Down The River,’ Says ‘The Atlantic’

Earlier today, U.S. President Donald Trump signed two executive orders that will see the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, as well as sweeping reforms to “strip funding” from border towns and cities seen as havens for undocumented immigrants, as reported by Yahoo News.

How Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto responds to the order was considered in an article by John Mill Ackerman, with the Atlantic. Ackerman predicted that the Mexican president will “speak publicly about protecting his people, but his real agenda is to negotiate impunity.”

Writing with El Financiero, Raymundo Riva Palacio stated that the bubbles that “Mexican presidents inhabit always isolates them from the earthly moods.” The Mexican writer described the bubble occupied by Pena Nieto as being “more solid and hermetic” than those occupied by his predecessors and the president choosing to be held “hostage to his advisors and the Presidential General Staff.”

The Atlantic writer states that despite all the attention given to Russian President Vladimir Putin and election meddling, the biggest foreign contributor to the Trump presidential victory was Mexico. The Mexican president is scheduled to be the first Latin American leader to meet with the new U.S. president at the White House on January 31.

President Pena Nieto will “sell his country down the river” in exchange for President Trump looking the other way with regard to “systematic human rights violations” and “vast corruption scandals” thereby “legitimizing Trump’s attacks” against his nation, Ackerman opined.

Riva Palacio writes that the Mexican president’s already low popularity plummeted to the “depths of rejection that he had not seen in his six-year term” when he was visited by Donald Trump in August of 2016 during his presidential campaign, as previously reported by the Inquisitr. The Atlantic described a “royal reception” waiting for him when then-presidential nominee Trump arrived in Mexico.

President Trump’s Mexican trip was followed by an Arizona campaign rally, as reported by the Inquisitr, where he, to the amazement of some observers, was able to push through his border wall plans while at the same time manufacturing the image of “a statesman and a friend of Mexico and Mexicans.”

Trump has praised Luis Videgaray, who the Mexican president identified as having arranged the U.S. president’s August visit, as a “brilliant finance minister and a wonderful man.” Despite the fact that Videgaray claims that he has no experience as a diplomat, President Pena Nieto named him as his foreign secretary in December in a move seeming engineered to appease Donald Trump.

Mexico's President Pena Nieto: "Wall Must Be Transformed, Efficient & Safe Many lives will be saved" #TrumpEnMexico pic.twitter.com/fvp4rZqFOn

— Veteran For Trump (@Veteran4Trump) August 31, 2016

Comparisons between President Trump and President Pena Nieto abound: Mexico already treats undocumented Central American immigrants in a way similar to Trump’s plan, including construction of a Mexico-Guatemala border wall and “mass deportation policies.” The Mexican president is also a well-known corporatist who privatized Mexico’s oil and gas industry, as previously reported by the Inquisitr, and has a shoddy track record when it comes to “freedom of expression and protest.”

The specifics of President Trump’s new immigration plan are said to include funding for 5,000 more border patrol agents and raids on homes and workplaces, potentially dividing families where some members are in the United States legally and others are undocumented, as reported by Business Insider.

Over the coming days, more executive orders are expected from the new president, including new restrictions on refugees and a halt to the issuance of travel visas from countries in North Africa and the Middle East, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen.

“I believe the steps we will take starting right now will improve the safety in both of our countries,” Trump was quoted by Yahoo, “A nation without borders is not a nation.”

[Featured Image by David McNew/Getty Images]