Iran Press/ America: 'We build the wall or close the southern border...,' Donald Trump wrote in a string of tweets, according to an Iran Press report.
Trump also said he would cut off aid to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, where violence and crime have motivated thousands of people to flee and seek asylum in the United States. He also said another migrant caravan is heading toward the US.
Trump refused to sign a short-term funding bill last week that would have pushed the spending fight to February, insisting that Congress allocate billions of dollars for the border wall.
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The president also complained about Mexico stealing American jobs and undermining the auto industry and said Central America's violence-riddled Northern Triangle countries were 'taking advantage of the US for years.'
The San Diego Union Tribune reported on Thursday that another caravan of migrants from Honduras is forming, with as many as 15,000 migrants, who could add to the backlog of asylum seekers who are currently in Tijuana, Mexico, undergoing the lengthy asylum request process.
Democrats will take over leadership in the House of Representatives in January, and have telegraphed little interest in spending billions of dollars to help the president achieve a signature campaign promise.
Trump has alternately declared victory and decried Democratic obstruction on the border wall, repeatedly claiming that it is being built (when in fact fencing is being replaced and repaired) and that Democrats are just trying to hurt him in their opposition to spending billions on building a border wall.
Trump's claims come as his Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen visits the border on Friday, after two children died while in US custody.
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The deaths of two migrant children in just over two weeks raised strong new doubts about the ability of US border authorities to care for the thousands of minors arriving as part of a surge of families trying to enter the country.
Cynthia Pompa, the advocacy manager for the ACLU border rights centre, said the number of migrant deaths had increased last year even as the number of border crossings fell.
Around 2,000 migrant children had been separated from their parents between mid-April and May 2018, because, unlike their parents, they are not charged with a crime. 208/ 211 /103
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