Earlier this week, I wrote about how Mexico was considering filing a lawsuit against the United States for failing to protect Mexican citizens gunned down during the El Paso shooting. The idea seemed laughable enough. After all, if the U.S. doesn’t have a duty to protect American citizens from horrible crimes, why would it have such a duty to protect foreign nationals, at least some of whom didn’t comply with American laws in order to get here?

Another point that was laughable was for Mexico to talk about violence in the U.S. when they can’t keep their own house in order.

A prime example of that comes to us from an AP report published on Thursday.

Mexican police found nine bodies hanging from an overpass Thursday alongside a drug cartel banner threatening rivals, and seven more corpses hacked up and dumped by the road nearby. Just down the road were three more bodies, for a total of 19.

The killing spree reported by prosecutors in the western state of Michoacan marked a return to the grisly massacres carried out by drug cartels at the height of Mexico’s 2006-2012 drug war, when piles of bodies were dumped on roadways as a message to authorities and rival gangs.

Two of the bodies hung by ropes from the overpass by their necks, half naked, and one of the dismembered bodies were women, Michoacan Attorney General Adrián López Solís said at a news conference.

The victims in the city of Uruapan had been shot to death. Some were hung with their hands bound, some with their pants pulled down.

While the banner was not completely legible, it bore the initials of the notoriously violent Jalisco drug cartel, and mentioned the Viagras, a rival gang. “Be a patriot, kill a Viagra,” the banner read in part.

“This kind of public, theatrical violence, where you don’t just kill, but you brag about killing, is meant to intimidate rivals and send a message to the authorities,” said Mexico security analyst Alejandro Hope.

I mean, it’s almost like Mexico can’t even protect its own citizens, huh?

Look, no one is trying to justify what happened in El Paso. There’s no excuse for that kind of deranged thinking, including the killers comments that he wanted to decrease the demand for resources out of some desire to save the planet.

What I take issue with, though, is Mexico trying to act all big and bad on the world stage, poking the United States simply because it knows we won’t slap them down, all while being hypocrites about it. No nation can protect every citizen. Police can try, when they’re not as corrupt as law enforcement in Mexico tends to be, but they can’t do it.

Yet if Mexico can’t even stop this degree of violence, one that’s hardly new to a country that’s bordered on failed-state status for years, then how is the United States supposed to prevent a black swan-like event?

Maybe, if Mexico wants its citizens protected from racially-motivated attacks in the United States, then maybe do more to keep people from crossing the border on their end.

Just a thought.