With all the media chatter about threats to America from Nork nukes and such, it’s easy to forget the ongoing dangers posed by our thuggish neighbor to the south. Breitbart had a chilling headline this week about increased cartel violence: U.S. Border Agents Warned of ‘Open Warfare’ with ‘Grenades’ in Mexico at Texas Border. Mexican drug violence is back with a vengeance, and the country is on track to have 25,000 murders this year.

We need the Trump Wall built, no matter how much Mexicans squawk about having their easy access to US jobs and freebies cut off.

Illegal border crossings spiked up 27 percent in May after falling precipitously after the Trump election. Perhaps illegal aliens just discovered they wouldn’t be shot on sight while breaking into Trump-run America.

Just how violent is Mexico these days? RT colorfully headlined (6/22): 3 killed every hour: Mexico’s murder rate reaches 20-year high.

Fox News reporter William La Jeunesse explained the background and present situation with our neighbor:

WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE: Mexico is now the second deadliest country in the world after only Syria, and while they’re in a civil war, Mexico’s violence is attributable to only one thing — drugs. So for context, just a few years ago it seemed we were doing a story every week like this under then-President Felipe Calderon which replaced corrupt cops and took the cartels head-on with the military. But every time you take out one kingpin, another would emerge.

Then Mexico got a new president in 2012, Enrique Pena Nieto, who took a less hardline view. Violence subsided, but now it is back. With the capture of former Sinaloa cartel leader El Chapo and others, the turf wars returned, fueled largely by the US meth and heroin epidemic. Mexico saw a record 2,186 murders in May, 30 percent more than last year and the most in two decades.

So Mexico has 31 states: the highest rate of violence is in Guerrero, the country’s opium capital. Today Mexico provides 90 percent of our heroin, up from just 10 percent 20 years ago. Next is Sinaloa, the pot capital where under-lords are fighting to replace El Chapo. Finally the biggest jump in killings however — almost 400 percent — was in Baja where the Jalisco cartel is fighting to control the drug routes into California and Arizona.

While most of the violence is among criminals, it does breed corruption and fear. It goes into tourist areas like Cabo and Cancun, and it fuels extortion and kidnapping. Yesterday there were three workers in Veracruz who are attacked because they were hanging a billboard offering a reward for a drug lord. So we’re looking at over 25,000 fatalities every year.