From the glassiest of glass houses, Mexican El Presidente Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is threatening legal action against Texas over new immigration laws.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday said his government was preparing to challenge a new Texas law allowing state law enforcement to arrest suspected migrants, which he called "inhumane."

On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed the law giving local officers powers long delegated to the U.S. government.

Migrants who enter the United States illegally can already be charged with illegal entry or re-entry under federal laws, but the governor of the border state has criticized what he calls U.S. President Joe Biden's failure to enforce them.

On Monday, I wrote about Texas Governor Greg Abbott signing a new law making it a state-level crime to enter Texas illegally; earlier in December, my colleague Bonchie informed us of Abbott's authorizing Texas law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants. But now the Mexican leader is punching back, claiming that he will seek legal sanctions against Texas.

None of this, of course, would be an issue if the Biden administration was actually enforcing immigration law. Governor Abbott has remonstrated with President Biden on his issue in the past and is now taking matters into his own hands, which is perhaps understandable given the lack of federal action.

But that isn't making Mexico's president any happier.

"The foreign ministry is already working on the process to challenge this law," Lopez Obrador said.

Abbott "wants to win popularity with these measures, but he's not going to win anything, but he'll lose favor, because in Texas there are so many Mexicans and migrants," the president added.

Good luck with that!

The fundamental problem here is one of incentives. It's in Mexico's interest to keep the flow of people moving north; their citizens in the United States, legally and illegally, remit around $60 billion a year to relatives in Mexico; this is a substantial income flow, a boost to Mexico's economy, and a benefit that keeps the ruling class in place. And it's not just Mexico, mind, from whence all these illegal immigrants come, and Mexico certainly doesn't want any of these folks to remain in Mexico, where they would be a drag instead on Mexican taxpayers.

Here in the Estados Unidos, however, the cost of illegal immigration to U.S. taxpayers to date runs as high as $450 billion. "Sanctuary cities" are facing increasing unrest from their populations over the waves of illegal aliens overwhelming city services, and Washington's response to the crisis has been not only ineffective but, at times, downright nonsensical. What's worse is the amount of human trafficking that is going on as another income stream for the Mexican drug cartels.

This is what has led to the states taking action on their own. It's important to note, by the way, that it isn't just Republican governors that have apparently had enough.

The United States provides a vital safety valve to Mexico and the Central American nations as well. If El Presidente Obrador wants to complain about our unwillingness to allow unchecked illegal immigration into our country, he may find himself facing an increasingly hostile U.S. population, Hispanics among them – and were we to simply enforce the same kind of system Mexico itself uses, he would swiftly find that safety valve (and those billions in remittances) cut off.

What will Mexico do then? Collapse in ruin, most likely. Unfortunately, that’s bad for us, too; maybe order can arise from chaos, but that’s not the way to bet. Having a failed narco-state run entirely by cartels on our southern border won’t be a good thing.

Unfortunately, it increasingly looks like we’re headed in that direction.