President Donald Trump moved aggressively to tighten the nation’s immigration controls Wednesday, signing executive actions to jumpstart construction of his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall and cut federal grants for immigrant-protecting “sanctuary cities.” As early as Thursday, he is expected to pause the flow of all refugees to the U.S. and indefinitely bar those fleeing war-torn Syria.

“Beginning today the United States of America gets back control of its borders,” Trump declared during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security. “We are going to save lives on both sides of the border.”

The actions, less than a week into Trump’s presidency, fulfilled pledges that animated his candidacy and represented a dramatic redirection of U.S. immigration policy. They were cheered by Republicans allies in Congress, condemned by immigration advocates and the trigger for immediate new tension with the Mexican government.

Trump is expected to wield his executive power again later this week with the directive to dam the refugee flow into the U.S. for at least four months, in addition to the open-ended pause on Syrian arrivals.

The president’s upcoming order is also expected to suspend issuing visas for people from several predominantly Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — for at least 30 days, according to a draft executive order obtained by The Associated Press.

Trump is unveiling his immigration plans at a time when detentions at the nation’s southern border are down significantly from levels seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The arrest tally last year was the fifth-lowest since 1972. Deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally also increased under President Barack Obama, though Republicans criticized him for setting prosecution guidelines that spared some groups from the threat of deportation, including those brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

As a candidate, Trump tapped into the immigration concerns of some Americans who worry both about a loss of economic opportunities and the threat of criminals and terrorists entering the country. His call for a border wall was among his most popular proposals with supporters, who often broke out in chants of “build that wall” during rallies.

Immigration advocates and others assailed the new president’s actions. Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the president’s desire to construct a border wall was “driven by racial and ethnic bias that disgraces America’s proud tradition of protecting vulnerable migrants.”

How Trump plans to pay for the wall project is murky. While he has repeatedly promised that Mexico will foot the bill, U.S. taxpayers are expected to cover the initial costs and the new administration has said nothing about how it might compel Mexico to reimburse the money.

In an interview with ABC News earlier Wednesday, Trump said, “There will be a payment; it will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form.”

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has insisted his country will not pay for a wall, has been expected to meet with Trump at the White House next week, although a senior official said Trump’s announcement had led him to reconsider the visit.

Congressional aides say there is about $100 million of unspent appropriations in the Department of Homeland Security account for border security, fencing and infrastructure. That would allow planning efforts to get started, but far more money would have to be appropriated for construction to begin.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, in an interview Wednesday on MSNBC, said Congress will work with Trump on the upfront financing for the wall. Asked about estimates that the project could cost $8 billion to $14 billion, Ryan said, “That’s about right.”

Trump has insisted many times the border structure will be a wall. The order he signed referred to “a contiguous, physical wall or other similarly secure, contiguous and impassable physical barrier.”

To build the wall, the president is relying on a 2006 law that authorized several hundred miles of fencing along the 2,000-mile frontier. That bill led to the construction of about 700 miles of various kinds of fencing designed to block both vehicles and pedestrians.

The president’s orders also call for hiring 5,000 additional border patrol agents and 10,000 more immigration officers, though the increases are subject to the approval of congressional funding. He also moved to end what Republicans have labeled a catch-and-release system at the border. Currently, some immigrants caught crossing the border illegally are released and given notices to report back to immigration officials at a later date.

Trump’s crackdown on sanctuary cities — locales that don’t cooperate with immigration authorities — could cost individual jurisdictions millions of dollars. But the administration may face legal challenges, given that some federal courts have found that cities or counties cannot hold immigrants beyond their jail terms or deny them bond based only a request from immigration authorities.

Some of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas — including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — are considered sanctuary cities.

The president also moved to restart the “Secure Communities” program, which was launched under President George W. Bush and initially touted as a way for immigration authorities to quickly and easily identify people in the country illegally who had been arrested by local authorities.

The program helped the Obama administration deport a record high of more than 409,000 immigrants in 2012. But Obama eventually abandoned the program after immigration advocates and civil libertarians decried it as too often targeting immigrants charged with low-level crimes, including traffic violations.

Among those in the audience for Trump’s remarks at DHS were the families of people killed by people in the U.S. illegally. After reading the names of those killed, Trump said, “Your children will not have lost their lives for no reason.”

Trump’s actions on halting all refugees could be announced as soon as Thursday. Administration officials and others briefed on the plans cautioned that some details of the measures could still be changed, but indicated that Trump planned to follow through on his campaign promises to limit access to the U.S. for people coming from countries with terrorism ties.</s>Trump will meet on Friday with May in Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Saturday.

The meeting will be an opportunity for May, who initially struggled to build relations with Trump's transition team, to discuss what has long been termed the "special relationship" between the two nations, a central pillar of Britain's foreign policy.

Trump, who endorsed the British vote to leave the European Union and is friends with May critic Nigel Farage, has said he wants to arrange a swift bilateral trade deal with the United Kingdom.

Trade will also be part of the agenda for Trump's meeting with Pena Nieto along with immigration and security, Spicer told reporters. The leaders spoke by phone on Saturday and discussed meeting on Jan. 31, he said.

Trump has said he wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed in 1994 with Canada and Mexico, in order to improve terms for U.S. workers.

Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also spoke by phone on Saturday and discussed setting up "additional meetings in the days to come," Spicer said.</s>Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has cancelled his planned visit to the U.S. where he was expected to meet with President Donald J. Trump. The cancellation comes after Mexico’s government denounced Trump’s new border security measures aimed at interfering with the cash flow of the very Mexican cartels believed to have financed the current Mexican president’s campaign.

On Thursday morning, Peña Nieto took to Twitter to announce that his staff had notified the White House that he would not be going to the scheduled meetings with Trump.

On Wednesday, Trump signed two executive orders dealing with enforcing current immigration laws and the construction of a border wall. Trump specifically called out Mexican cartels in the executive order. In response to the anti-cartel measures, Peña Nieto took to social media, as Breitbart Texas reported.

In addition to denouncing the measure, Peña Nieto announced that he would be ordering the 50 Mexican Consulates in the U.S. to step up their efforts to protect “migrants”. The Mexican president made no mention of the fact that the migrants are one of the largest funding mechanisms for the cartels who reportedly helped him gain his office.

In response to Peña Nieto’s announcement, Trump responded on Twitter that it would be better to cancel the meeting. According to Trump, the U.S.- Mexico relation has been one sided with the current $60 billion trade deficit with Mexico in connection with the current North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Mexican President Peña Nieto has been the subject of immaculate investigative reporting in his own country, though his reported ties to Mexican cartels received little attention from the U.S. during the presidency of Barack Obama.

An in-depth investigation has revealed that through the use of shell companies, members of the Juarez Cartel financed the political campaign of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. The cartel members appear to have also used government programs to launder money and profit form their networks of contacts.

The bombshell revelation was made this week by the independent news outlet Aristegui Noticias who claim that top officials of the Juarez Cartel financed thousands of cash cards that were handed out by Mexico’s Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) during the 2012 political campaign that resulted in the victory of Enrique Pena Nieto. According to the Mexican journalists, the cash cards were provided by a company called Monex. They were reported to be financed through a series of shell corporations by key players with the Juarez Cartel.

Through a three part series, the Mexican news organization identified Rodolfo David “El Consul” Avila Cordero as a key figure in the financial scandal that implicates the leading figures in Mexico’s ruling party the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).

Avila Cordero was arrested in 2005 in Mexico City in connection with the seizure of almost $750,000 in cash. At the time authorities had identified him as a top tier operative with the Juarez (Carrillo Fuente) Cartel who worked as their financial operator an a key figure in their connections with Colombian drug lords. Avila Cordero had earned the nickname “The Consul” because of his links to high ranking officials within the Mexican government and acted as an ambassador of sorts, Aristegui Noticias reported.

Eight years after his arrest, Avila Cordero became a contractor for a government funded program called Crusade Against Hunger. Using a company called Conclave SA de CV and Prodasa SA de CV, Cordero was able to secure more than $396 million pesos or $25 million in government contracts through rigged bidding processes by government officials.

The Crusade Against Hunger is a pet project of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto who claimed that with that program he would improve the quality of life for his people.

According to the investigation by the Mexican journalists, Conclave and Prodasa are shell companies that do not have real offices or staff.

As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, Carmen Aristegui, the founder of Aristegui Noticias, was a top rated radio journalists in Mexico, however her investigation into properties given to Pena Nieto as bribes led to her news outlet firing her and her staff. Despite being off the air, Aristegui continues reporting through her website.

As part of the investigation Aristegui Noticias also confirmed that Conclave was involved in the trading of soccer players with European soccer clubs.

Breitbart Texas also illuminated the current realities in Pieña Nieto’s Mexico, especially along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mexican president has allowed paramilitary narco-cartels to control entire Mexican states. We wrote:

Though many politicians, journalists, and pundits have criticized the concept of a physical border barrier while others claimed the border to be safe, the aforementioned groups and individuals are simply ignorant on the topic or engaging in intentional deception. Breitbart Texas and the Cartel Chronicles effort has reported ad nauseum on Mexican cartels that have operational control over entire Mexican border states — including the governors’ offices and newsrooms. Our reporting has shown that U.S. law enforcement encounters with known or suspected terrorists have occurred frequently in remote areas along the U.S.-Mexico border. We’ve shown that there are humanitarian consequences associated with an unsecured border — not just for U.S. citizens, but for foreigners as well.

Our reporting has shown that one of the Mexican cartels, Los Zetas, is currently stockpiling Russian rocket-propelled grenades and their launchers at the Texas border, that they recently forced down a U.S. helicopter by open firing on the aircraft and striking it. Los Zetas are headquartered in Nuevo Laredo, a city that sits immediately across the shallow and narrow Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. There are no fences or walls in the region and the local police do not have a presence in many of the gang-infested narco-neighborhoods that sit in Texas along the open border.

Along with Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel is also headquartered immediately south of the Texas border. The Mexican state of Tamaulipas is largely controlled by the two paramilitary groups. All of the news outlets in the region have a “link” who works for the cartel and tells journalists what they can and can’t write about. Journalists and editors who ignore the control of the local cartel faction are brutally murdered. Many concerned citizens in Mexico have taken to anonymous social media accounts to report on the cartels. When the now-citizen-journalists are discovered, they are brutally murdered.

The cartels in this region have also set up metropolitan camera and surveillance systems across the cities they control. Two of the past three governors for the state are currently fugitives from U.S. justice for their roles and relationships with the cartels. One of the former-governor fugitives was being protected by the state government as recently as a few months ago.

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.

Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.</s>MEXICO CITY — When Donald J. Trump called some Mexican immigrants rapists, threatened to deport millions of them and promised to build a wall to keep others out, Mexican officials counseled caution, saying it was merely bluster from an unlikely candidate who, if elected, would never follow through.

Now, after just five days in office, President Trump is looking a lot like Candidate Trump — and the Mexicans are furious.

With just a few strokes of the pen on Wednesday, the new American president signed an executive order to beef up the nation’s deportation force and start construction on a new wall between the nations. Adding to the perceived insult was the timing of the order: It came on the first day of talks between top Mexican officials and their counterparts in Washington, and just days before a meeting between the two countries’ presidents.

The action was enough to prompt President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico to consider scrapping his plans to visit the White House on Tuesday, according to Mexican officials. In a video message delivered over Twitter on Wednesday night, Mr. Peña Nieto did not address whether he would cancel the meeting, saying only that future steps would be taken in consultation with the country’s lawmakers. Instead, he reiterated his commitment to protect the interests of Mexico and the Mexican people, and chided the move in Washington to continue with the wall.</s>New York Times: “With just a few strokes of the pen on Wednesday, the new American president signed an executive order to beef up the nation’s deportation force and start construction on a new wall between the nations. Adding to the perceived insult was the timing of the order: It came on the first day of talks between top Mexican officials and their counterparts in Washington, and just days before a meeting between the two countries’ presidents.”

“The action was enough to prompt President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico to consider scrapping his plans to visit the White House on Tuesday, according to Mexican officials. It mattered little to them whether Mr. Trump’s order would receive congressional approval or the funding required to fulfill it.”

Meanwhile, The Hill reports Peña Nieto reaffirmed his country will not pay for a border wall.</s>- Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Thursday he will not attend a planned Jan. 31 meeting with President Donald J. Trump, hours after Trump tweeted that the meeting should be canceled if Mexico won't pay for a border wall.

Pena Nieto's message on Twitter ended days of uncertainty about how he would respond to Trump's aggressive stance toward the country, and illustrated the challenges world leaders are likely to face in dealing with Trump's voluble, Twitter-based diplomacy.

"This morning we have informed the White House I will not attend the working meeting planned for next Tuesday," Pena Nieto tweeted.

"Mexico reaffirms its willingness to work with the United States to reach agreements that benefit both nations," he added.

In Washington, White House press secretary Sean Spicer responded to the Mexican president's announcement, saying: "We'll look for a date to schedule something in the future. We will keep the lines of communication open."

Earlier Thursday, Trump had tweeted that "If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting" in Washington D.C.

Trump said Wednesday he would start building a U.S.-Mexico border wall and has vowed to make Mexico pay for it. Mexico opposes the wall and has repeatedly said it won't pay.

Officials had said Mexico was "considering" canceling after the border wall announcement, but Trump appeared to beat Mexico to the punch in that game of brinkmanship.

Former foreign relations secretary Jorge Castaneda told local media that after Trump's tweet, "Pena Nieto has no other choice but to say `I'm not going."'

Trump's unpredictable style appeared to catch Mexico's normally quiet and cautious diplomacy off guard.

"I think that, in general, diplomacy is not conducted via Twitter," Finance Secretary Jose Antonio Meade told Radio Formula.

Mexico's best-known opposition politician, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, tweeted that "in the face of Trump's latest outburst, don't go to the meeting, and submit an urgent complaint to the U.N. for human rights violations."</s>Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Wednesday indicated that he was considering canceling his planned Tuesday visit to the White House over President Trump's executive order calling for the construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He said he would consult with lawmakers on whether to go. Mexican politicians and historians pressured Peña Nieto to snub Trump, with some using Twitter to call Trump's action "an offense to Mexico," a "slap in the face," and a "monument to lies." Peña Nieto said building a wall "far from uniting us, divides us." He also reiterated that Mexico would not pay for the wall, as Trump claims. House Speaker Paul Ryan said Congress would pay to get the $8 billion to $14 billion wall started, then focus on "getting Mexico to contribute."</s>Mexico's president is "considering" canceling next week's visit to Washington following President Donald Trump's order to begin construction of a wall between the two countries, a senior official said.

In a nationally televised speech late Wednesday, President Enrique Pena Nieto condemned the U.S. decision and repeated that Mexico would not pay for the wall despite Trump's avowals that it would.

"I regret and reject the decision of the U.S. to build the wall," he said. "I have said time and again, Mexico will not pay for any wall."

Pena Nieto did not directly mention whether he would make the trip to Washington on Jan. 31, but said he would await reports from the high-level team of Mexican officials currently meeting with Trump administration officials in Washington.

"Based on the final report from the Mexican officials who are in Washington right now ... I will make decisions about what to do next," he said.

After talking tough about the wall, he held out an olive branch, saying "Mexico re-affirms its friendship with the people of the United States, and its willingness to reach agreements with its government."

The decision to possibly rethink the visit comes amid growing outrage in Mexico, and a sense among many that Pena Nieto has been too weak in the face of Trump's tough policy stance.

The senior official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press the administration "is considering" scrapping Pena Nieto's visit to the U.S. "That's what I can tell you."

It was not clear when a final decision may be made.

Trump's order came the same day Mexico's foreign relations and economy secretaries arrived in Washington, and its timing was seen by many in Mexico as a slap in the face.

Critics of Pena Nieto - whose approval ratings were just 12 percent in a recent survey, the lowest for any Mexican president in the polling era - have hammered him for his perceived weakness on Trump. Opposition politicians urged him Wednesday to call off the trip.

"The position is very clear," said Ricardo Anaya Cortes, president of the conservative opposition National Action Party. "Either one cancels the meeting with Donald Trump, or one attends it to say publicly and with absolute firmness that Mexico rejects the wall and we will not pay a single cent for it."

Trump has also promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson argued that Pena Nieto should keep the meeting as scheduled, saying Mexico should exhaust all possibilities for negotiating to minimize damage. He said Pena Nieto should try to reach an agreement that's enough to let Trump claim victory and then move on to another foil.

"Trump is more interested in boasting of an immediate success than an ambitious result. He is interested in appearances," Zepeda said.

The U.S. president has also promised to step up deportations. He launched his campaign with remarks calling immigrants crossing in illegally from Mexico criminals, drug dealers and "rapists." Trump added that "some" were presumably good people, but the comments nonetheless deeply offended many Mexicans.

Pena Nieto was roundly criticized after inviting candidate Trump to Mexico City last August and disappointed many of his countrymen by not publicly confronting Trump on the wall.

On Tuesday, ahead of their trip to Washington, the economy and foreign relations secretaries suggested that Mexico could leave NAFTA if negotiations with Washington are unsatisfactory - though that would not be the first choice.

Already Mexico is feeling the effects of the new tone from Washington. The Mexican peso has sharply devalued since Trump was elected, and several high-profile business ventures have been canceled amid threats to impose a border tax on goods made in Mexico and exported to the United States.

Copyright 2017 FOX 11 Los Angeles : Download our mobile app for breaking news alerts or to watch FOX 11 News | Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Be a citizen journalist for FOX 11 and get paid – download the Fresco News App today.</s>President Enrique Pea Nieto on Thursday called off a trip to Washington, after President Trump launched his plan to construct a border wall and insisted he would stick Mexico with the bill. The incident opened one of the most serious rifts in memory between the United States and its southern neighbor.

Trump spokesman Sean Spicer added a stunning new detail about the proposed wall project later Thursday, saying that Trump intended to pay for it by imposing a 20-percent tax on all imports from Mexico.

Pea Nieto had been scheduled to meet with Trump on Tuesday to discuss immigration, trade and drug-war cooperation. He called off the visit after Trump tweeted that it would be "better to cancel the upcoming meeting" if Mexico was unwilling to pay for the wall.

Trump's moves have rekindled old resentments in Mexico, a country that during its history has often felt bullied and threatened by its wealthier, more powerful neighbor. The legacy of heavy-handed U.S. behavior - which includes invasions and the seizure of significant Mexican lands — has mostly been played down by a generation of Mexican leaders who have pursued pragmatic policies and mutual economic interests with both Republican and Democratic U.S. administrations.

Both Pea Nieto and Spicer said that their countries were interested in maintaining positive relations. "We will keep the lines of communication open," Spicer told reporters in Washington on Thursday morning, adding that the White House would "look for a date to schedule something in the future." The Mexican president tweeted that his government was willing to work with the United States "to reach agreements that benefit both nations."

But Mexicans expressed shock and dismay as Trump moved to turn his campaign promises into reality.

Mexicans view a wall across the 2,000-mile border as a symbolic affront, part of a package of Trump policies that could cause the country serious economic pain. They include a crackdown on illegal immigrants, who send billions of dollars home, and renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. The treaty has allowed trade between the neighbors to mushroom. Every day, $1.4 billion in goods ccross the U.S.-Mexico border, and millions of jobs are linked to trade on both sides. Mexico is the second largest customer for American-made products in the world, and 80 percent of Mexican exports - automobiles, flat screen TVs, avocados - are sold to the United States.

"When we are talking about building a wall, about deporting migrants, about eliminating sanctuary cities [for migrants], about threatening to end a free trade agreement, or to take away factories, we are really talking about causing human suffering," Margarita Zavala, a possible candidate for the presidency in 2018 and the wife of former president Felipe Calderon, said in an interview. "And after today, without a doubt, it is very difficult to negotiate from behind a wall."

Mexicans had trouble recalling a time when relations were this bad with the United States or when an American president appeared to be such a threat to Mexico's core interests.

"Never," former president Vicente Fox said in an interview, when asked if Mexico had faced a comparable U.S. president in his lifetime. "And I never thought the U.S. people would go for a president like this."

"We don't want the ugly American, which Trump represents: that imperial gringo that used to invade our country, that used to send the Marines, that used to put and take away presidents most everywhere in the world," Fox added. "That happened in the 20th century and this is what this guy is menacing us with."

Trump, for his part, faulted the Mexicans for damaging the relationship.

Addressing a GOP policy retreat in Philadelphia, Trump said Thursday afternoon, "The president of Mexico and myself have agreed to cancel our planned meeting" next Tuesday. "Unless Mexico is going to treat the United States fairly, with respect, such a meeting would be fruitless," he added.

It was not clear exactly how the Trump administration would impose the new tax on Mexican exports. But Spicer said it would be part of a broader plan to tax imports from countries with which the United States has a trade deficit, like Mexico.

"If you tax that $50 billion at 20 percent of imports - which is by the way a practice that 160 other countries do - right now our country's policy is to tax exports and let imports flow freely in, which is ridiculous," Spicer told reporters. "By doing it that we can do $10 billion a year and easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone. That's really going to provide the funding."

Pea Nieto's decision to cancel the trip came a day after Trump signed an executive order to construct a border wall, one of Trump's signature promises and a rallying cry for his supporters during last year's presidential campaign. Trump has insisted that Mexico will fund it, but Pea Nieto and other Mexican officials have angrily denied they will do so.

The timing of the order was seen as further insult: Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray was flying to Washington on Tuesday when news broke about Trump's impending border wall announcement. All Wednesday, speculation was rampant that Pea Nieto might cancel his upcoming trip.

In the meantime, Videgaray met at the White House with Craig Deare, who is in charge of Latin America on the National Security Council.

Throughout Trump's rise, Pea Nieto has been mostly respectful toward him, even inviting him to visit Mexico City as a candidate last August. Pea Nieto has tried to maintain a diplomatic approach to the new administration, suggesting that Mexico can negotiate with its largest trading partner and preserve good relations. On Wednesday night, Pea Nieto sent out a recorded message saying that he "regrets and disapproves" of the U.S. decision to move forward with the wall. He repeated that Mexico won't pay for the wall but he still planned to come to Washington to meet with Trump because of the importance of the negotiations.

But that decision changed after Trump's tweet on Thursday morning.

During a speech at a GOP policy retreat later in the day in Philadelphia, Trump described NAFTA as a "terrible deal, a total disaster for the United States," and said that the move of manufacturing to Mexico cost millions of American jobs and the closure of "thousands and thousands of plants" across the United States.

Rucker reported from Washington. Karen DeYoung, William Branigin, and Jenna Johnson in Washington and Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City contributed to this report.</s>President Donald Trump called on fellow Republicans to help him enact "great and lasting change" during a party retreat Thursday but offered few details. Later his spokesman said the president will seek a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports to pay for a proposed border wall.

The president was greeted by cheers as he took the stage in a hotel ballroom, telling senators and House members, "This Congress is going to be the busiest Congress in decades -- maybe ever."

He addressed lawmakers shortly after Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled a trip to Washington next week for his first meeting with the new president due to their disagreement over which of their countries would pay to build Trump's promised wall on the border between them.

The wall is part of Trump's plan to halt illegal immigration to the U.S., and he has long insisted that Mexico will pay. Pena Nieto insists his country will not.

On the flight back to Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters traveling with the president that Trump will seek to impose a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports to pay for the wall. Congressional approval would be needed for such a step.

In Trump's remarks to lawmakers, he cast the cancellation of his engagement with Pena Nieto as a mutual decision, saying they had "agreed to cancel our planned meeting." Trump had tweeted early Thursday that "it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting" given Pena Nieto's unwillingness to pay for the border wall.

Trump's election put Republicans in control of both the White House and Congress for the first time in more than a decade. Yet Trump's often fluid ideology has sometimes put him at odds with his own party, making agreement on issues including a tax overhaul and entitlements no guarantee.

Addressing fellow Republicans, the president spoke about his agenda in broad terms and then skipped a planned question-and-answer session. He gave the lawmakers no specific marching orders for tackling the repeal and replace of "Obamacare," one of the most complicated issues Congress is expected to tackle this year.

Later Thursday, Trump planned to use his executive authority to continue implementing his agenda.

The White House is considering steps to commission a probe of widespread voter fraud, restrict the flow of refugees to the U.S., and negotiate individual trade deals with countries that signed the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. Trump took steps earlier this week to withdraw the U.S. from TPP, saying the agreement puts American workers at a disadvantage.

Trump's brief trip to Philadelphia marked his first flight on Air Force One, the familiar blue and white government plane that has long ferried presidents around the country and the world. Spokesman Sean Spicer described Trump -- who traveled throughout the campaign and the transition on his own private jet -- as being "in awe" of the presidential aircraft.

Trump saluted as he walked off his Marine helicopter and chatted with an Air Force officer who escorted him to the steps of the plane. He climbed the steps slowly but did not turn around and wave as presidents often do.

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Mexican senior officials say President Peña Nieto may cancel his plans to visit the White House next Tuesday, January 31, because of President Trump's actions.