The Mexican government has made its first direct response to Donald Trump's pledge to build a wall along the two countries' border — and make Mexico pay for it.
Mexican Treasury Secretary Luis Videgaray says "emphatically and categorically" that it isn't going to foot the bill for the project proposed by the Republican presidential hopeful.
Videgaray told Milenio television late Wednesday that "Mexico will under no circumstance pay for the wall that Mr. Trump is proposing."
The wall proposal has been criticized widely and fiercely in Mexico, but the government itself has tried to avoid commenting directly on the issue until now.
Still, two former Mexican presidents spoke out against the wall in February.
"I declare, I'm not gonna pay for that f*****g wall," ex-president Vicente Fox told Univision's anchor Jorge Ramos. "He should pay for it; he's got the money."
Former President Felipe Calderón said on CNBC: "We are not going to pay any single cent for such a stupid wall! And it's going to be completely useless."
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Trump is leading the Republican presidential contenders and has used especially tough talk on immigration.
"If we don’t have borders, we don’t have a country," he wrote on Facebook Thursday in a response to Videgaray's comments. "MEXICO WILL PAY FOR THE WALL!"
