WASHINGTON (EFE) Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump says he will block remittances sent home by Mexican citizens in the United States if that country does not agree to pay for the wall he wants to build along the border between the two nations, according to a document his campaign released on Tuesday.

The two-page memo dated March 31 and entitled “Compelling Mexico to Pay for the Wall” was published by The Washington Post.

In it, Trump reveals for the first time his strategy – provided he wins the White House in November – to force Mexico to pay for the 1,000-mile-long wall he has promised to build along the U.S.-Mexico border to halt illegal immigration. The cost of the project, Trump says, would be about $8 billion.

The real estate magnate’s idea is to threaten Mexico with changing the Patriot Act to cut off funds that country receives in the form of remittances from its migrants living and working in the United States.

According to Trump, Mexico would “immediately” protest that threat, since each year it received “approximately $24 billion” in remittances from the United States, most of that money being sent back home by “undocumented immigrants.”

The threat to cut off the remittance flow from people illegally in the United States would not be acted upon if Mexico were to agree to contribute “a one-time payment” of between $5 billion and $10 billion to help pay for the wall, according to the memo.

“It’s an easy decision for Mexico,” says Trump in the memo, which includes other possible intimidation tactics to use against the U.S. southern neighbor, including raising trade tariffs or cancelling visas for Mexicans wanting to come to the United States.

As he has been saying throughout his campaign, Trump adds in the memo that Mexico has “taken advantage” of the United States justifying that assertion by arguing that drug traffickers and criminal bands in that country have “openly” abused the border and committed great numbers of crimes on U.S. territory.

Trump defends his idea of building an impenetrable wall by saying that the majority of Mexican immigrants who come to the United States are “criminals” and that northward flow must be stopped.