Donald Trump has doubled down on his threat to declare a national emergency to free up federal funds to build a wall on a visit to Texas as part of an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity.
When asked how soon it would be before he declare an emergency, the president said "if we don't make a deal with Congress most likely I will do that". Despite the fact any such move would bring legal challenges, Mr Trump said the law is "100 per cent on my side".
He went on to call the situation at the border "a national emergency, if you look what's happening."
Mr Trump did not lay out a specific timetable for when he might take the step of a declaration, saying: “I think we're going to see what happens over the next few days.”
Critics have accused Mr Trump of "manufacturing" a border crisis to try and get the wall as part of a deal to end a partial government shutdown.
Two days after delivering a televised address to the nation to make his case for a wall, and a day after he abruptly left a meeting with Democrats after they refused to pay for one, Mr Trump travelled to the city of McAllen where he signed autographs for supporters and met border agency officials.
As he left the White House for his visit to Texas, Mr Trump again denied throwing a “temper tantrum” during the encounter with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi a day earlier.
At a roundtable meeting with community leaders and officials in McAllen, among them Texas senator Ted Cruz, the president repeated his insistence that a wall would be be built.
“We’re going to build a powerful steel barrier. They said we don’t want a concrete wall. I said that’s okay, we’ll call it a steel barrier,” he said.
“They say this is a manufactured crisis. That’s their new sound bite ... Every network has ‘manufactured crisis’. But it’s not. What’s manufactured is the word ‘manufactured’.”
The president - who has cancelled an upcoming trip to Davos, Switzerland, because of the shutdown - also sought to address those critics who have pointed out he used to repeatedly promise Mexico would pay for any barrier. He claimed without evidence that the terms of a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada will provide the money for the wall.
“When I say Mexico’s going to pay for the wall ... I didn’t say they’re going to write me a check for $10bn or $20bn,” he said. “If Congress approves this trade bill, they’ll pay for the wall many times over. When I say Mexico’s going to lpay for the wall, that’s what I mean”.
To see how events unfolded throughout the day, see our liveblog below
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Critics said that would be illegal, and plans were afoot to immediately challenge it in court were Mr Trump to go ahead. Even members of his own party who want to build a wall have said they do not want money to be taken from the military to pay for it.
Nearly two dozen bodies have been found - most of them burned - in Mexico near the border with the US.
Authorities uncovered 20 bodies, including 17 burned ones, near Nuevo Laredo, along with five torches vehicles.
The grisly discovery took place in the town of Miguel Aleman in Tamaulipas state, across the Rio Grande from Texas.
Tamaulipas has become one of the most violent states in Mexico, riven by gangs fighting to control the drug trade, extortion rackets and the exploitation of migrants.
Hundreds of bodies in unmarked graves have been found in recent years in the aftermath of the decade-long drug war led by the military to battle the cartels, which led to increasingly bloody turf wars.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Senate majority leader Republican Mitch McConnell has said he will not allow a vote on anything the president would not sign.
The event, organised by union leaders, is set for noon ET (5pm GMT) at the AFL-CIO union headquarters
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