Enrique Peña Nieto repeats his refusal to fund border wall but leaves open the question of contentious 31 January trip to meet new US president 
 
 Mexico's president 'will not pay for any wall' – but may still visit Trump 
 
 Mexico’s president has once again declared that “Mexico will not pay for any wall” but stopped short of cancelling a visit to Washington after Donald Trump signed executive orders that include building the border barrier. 
 
 Enrique Peña Nieto reiterated that Mexico would not put a single peso towards the new US president’s signature project. In a televised address he said: “I regret and reject the decision of the US to build the wall.” 
 
 But Peña Nieto did not cancel a trip to Washington – a move many in Mexico had demanded after Trump signed an executive order to start plans for fencing off the frontier. 
 
 
 
 “I have said time and time again, Mexico will not pay for any wall,” Peña Nieto told the nation in his short video statement on Wednesday night. 
 
 “Mexico reaffirms its friendship with the people of the United States and its willingness to reach agreements with its government.” 
 
 He left up in the air the question of the 31 January meeting with Trump in the White House – saying his decision would depend on an evaluation by a team already in Washington and officials at home. 
 
 Mexicans reacted to the president’s statement with confusion. Many in the political class had called on Peña Nieto to cancel his meeting after Trump signed the executive order. 
 
 A senior government official told the Associated Press that the Mexican president was “considering” calling off the visit to Washington, but no decision had been taken. 
 
 On Thursday, Trump appeared to be goading his Mexican counterpart into pulling out of the visit, saying on Twitter: “If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting.” 
 
 Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, a leftist former presidential candidate, told an audience in Mexico City: “If a [Mexican] presidential visit is being announced, he will be received there by having the door slammed in his face. 
 
 “I think the least we can do in these conditions would be not to show up, cancel the visit to the United States and find a dignified position for Mexico.” 
 
 Peña Nieto has encountered sustained criticism for failing to come up with a decisive strategy to deal with Trump’s combative policies. 
 
 Trump repeatedly promised a border wall throughout his election campaign but Mexico’s political elite appeared to be hoping that the billionaire-turned-populist politician had been bluffing. 
 
 
 
 Trump's wall: Mexican construction firms likely to be biggest winners Read more 
 
 That hope proved misplaced on Wednesday, when the US president signed the order, proclaiming: “A nation without borders is not a nation.” 
 
 Trump claimed that “we’re in the middle of a crisis on our southern border”, citing an “unprecedented surge” of illegal immigrants from Central America that was harming both the US and Mexico. 
 
 The likely effectiveness of the planned wall is fiercely disputed. More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the US than have migrated to the US since the end of the 2007-08 financial crisis, according to the Pew Research Center. Research shows that immigrants are more law-abiding than non-immigrants. 
 
 Peña Nieto has consistently rejected Trump’s suggestion that Mexico will pay for the border wall and promised to put Mexico first in any negotiations. 
 
 
 
 But analysts say the president has few strong options in confronting an American administration considered the most hostile to Mexico since the Mexican-American war of the 1840s – in which Mexico was forced to cede its northern territory. 
 
 Peña Nieto – whose personal popularity ratings currently languish at 12% (the lowest in history) – appears to be caught in an impossible situation: paying for the wall would stoke domestic outrage. Not paying could provoke problems with Trump’s team, however. 
 
 “The whole thing is lose-lose. The only question is how much,” said Esteban Illades, editor of the Mexican magazine Nexos. 
 
 Trump’s executive order to build a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile US-Mexico border came on the same day Mexico’s foreign minister Luis Videgary and economy minister Ildefonso Guajardo met with senior Trump administration officials. 
 
 “I would cancel the meeting [with Trump] or postpone it as a message that we’re not going to do what they want, that we’re not going to play their game,” Agustín Basave, ex-leader of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution party, told the newspaper Reforma. “I would start by saying things like we are going to review Mexico’s cooperation in the areas of security and migration.” 
 
 
 
 Others were even more direct, including ex-president Vicente Fox – who has walloped Trump with profanity-laden tweets for more than a year. 
 
 Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) Sean Spicer, I've said this to @realDonaldTrump and now I'll tell you: Mexico is not going to pay for that fucking wall. #FuckingWall 
 
 Let's raise our voices against this dictator, Donald Trump | Vicente Fox Read more 
 
 Mexican officials have expressed hopes of salvaging Nafta, which facilitates more than $500bn annually in cross-border trade, though Guajardo told Mexican TV earlier this week that Mexico would consider walking away from the deal. 
 
 Canadian officials have also mused about abandoning Mexico to forge a bilateral deal with the US if necessary, leaving Mexico’s increasingly export-oriented economy in a bind. 
 
 “If we’re going for something that is less than what we have now, it doesn’t make sense to stay in,” Guajardo told the Televisa network. 
 
 Until recently, such a posture would have been unthinkable as Mexico shifted its economy from one so closed that smuggled candy was sold in itinerant markets to one so open it has more than 40 free-trade deals with countries around the world. 
 
 But moving away from the massive US market has proved difficult for Mexico, which sends 80% of its exports north. Peña Nieto told the nation Monday that Mexico would seek stronger ties with countries in the hemisphere, but promptly cancelled his participation in a summit of Latin American and Caribbean countries. 
 
 Trump's Mexico bashing may backfire if peso plunge forces poor migrants north Read more 
 
 “The cancelation was given in such short notice that it raises suspicions that Peña Nieto would not want to meet with other leaders who would want a strongly worded statement against Trump,” Illades said. 
 
 Peña Nieto has promised to impose conditions on any negotiation with the US, including addressing issues such as smuggled guns streaming across the border, arming drug cartels, and Mexico’s efforts to detain and deport migrants who transit its territory in attempts to reach the US. 
 
 But the president is playing a weak hand, while his approval rating of just 12% is hampering his attempts at fomenting unity in a time of crisis. 
 
 “There is unity; people do not like Trump,” says Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez, a sociologist in Mexico City, “but there is this sense that Trump is not the real problem, rather trust in a presidency ridden with scandals.” 
 
 Additional reporting by David Smith ||||| During his presidential campaign, no single promise electrified Donald Trump’s supporters more than the pledge to build a “big, beautiful wall” all along the border with Mexico. 
 
 Wednesday, President Trump turned that promise into an executive order, one of two he signed. His directive leaves many questions unanswered about what sort of wall might be built, how much it would cost and how it would be paid for. 
 
 The two orders, however, do begin the crackdown on illegal immigration that Trump promised his supporters. In addition to the wall, he would greatly expand deportations and detention of migrants and block federal money for so-called sanctuary cities. 
 
 Some of the actions will be felt immediately, some require more cash from Congress, others will only take effect over time. 
 
 Here’s a look at what the actions mean and what they don’t. 
 
 Border wall 
 
 Trump ordered the “immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border” and gave the Homeland Security department six months to study how to prevent “all unlawful entries” into the U.S. — a goal that is widely considered impossible. But “immediate construction” doesn’t mean a wall will be built all along the 2,000 miles of the Mexican border any time soon. Trump’s order directs Homeland Security to come up with a long-term plan for getting it done. 
 
 Cost estimates for walling off the entire border run from $12 billion to $38 billion, and the barriers would cost billions more to maintain over time. 
 
 Trump could tap some existing federal funds to begin construction. U.S. Customs and Border Protection already has budgeted $175 million for "procurement, construction and improvements." That wouldn't be nearly enough to finish the job, but it would allow a start. 
 
 Trump has famously said Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexican officials say no. Asking Mexico to pay for the wall is “unacceptable,” Mexico’s foreign minister Luis Videgaray has said. 
 
 Trump aides have floated the idea of taxing cash that flows back to Mexico from workers in the U.S. or using the wall construction as leverage in negotiations to change the terms of the North American Free Trade Agreement. 
 
 Trump promised Wednesday to help Mexico by stopping the flow of illegal cash and guns moving south from the U.S. He is scheduled to meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto next week, but Peña Nieto is under pressure at home to cancel the meeting in the wake of Trump’s announcement. 
 
 Currently, about 600 miles of the border have some form of fence, ranging from the imposing barrier along parts of the California border to more traditional fencing elsewhere. Building all that already cost about $7 billion. The government uses walls and fencing in highly trafficked urban areas where border agents have only minutes to apprehend illegal crossers. Cameras and sensors are used in more remote areas. 
 
 Border Patrol agents have long said that what they need to reduce illegal border crossings further is more of those cameras, sensors, vehicles and equipment and not more physical barriers. Smuggling cartels often use blow torches to cut holes through existing border walls or dig tunnels under them, they say. 
 
 The government has has also increased the size of the Border Patrol from about 10,000 agents in 2004 to 21,000 today. Trump plans to add an additional 5,000 agents. 
 
 The increase in security — plus economic changes in both the U.S. and Mexico — has meant fewer people are crossing back and forth over the border. The Pew Research Center estimates that in recent years, more Mexicans have been returning to Mexico than migrating to the U.S. 
 
 There has been a dramatic increase in Central American migrants arriving at the border in Texas, but a large share of those people are not trying to evade capture. Instead, they quickly surrender to border agents and make claims for asylum, saying they are fleeing the violence in their home countries. 
 
 Deporting more people 
 
 Under Trump’s plans, immigration officials will have much more freedom to deport people they find in the country illegally. President Obama tried to focus the deportation force on removing people with criminal records and those who pose a threat to public safety, and deportations from the interior of the country declined during Obama’s second term. 
 
 Trump dramatically expanded the list of people considered a priority for removal to include those charged with crimes, even if a trial has not yet been held, and those who have improperly received any welfare benefit. As a result, a lot more people will be unable to win reprieves from deportation even if they have strong family ties in the U.S. 
 
 Immigration officials can act on these new priorities immediately. There are about 800,000 people in the U.S. who already have a final order of removal from an immigration judge and have either refused to leave or been allowed to stay temporarily, often because of the hardship their deportation would cause to family in the U.S. 
 
 Also, countries that refuse to take back people being deported from the U.S. have been put on notice by the Trump administration that they must accept return of their citizens. About 23 countries currently don’t accept deportations from the U.S., including Afghanistan, Algeria, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. 
 
 Courts have ruled that people from such countries can’t be held indefinitely, even if they have a violent criminal conviction. As a result, more than 8,000 immigrants with criminal records have been released in the past three years. 
 
 Trump also instructed immigration officials to expand the number and size of detention facilities to hold asylum seekers and people awaiting hearings in immigration court. Cases for people held in detention can move more quickly, and they can be deported faster than those released and told to appear in court. 
 
 Advocates for immigrants are concerned about the poor conditions in detention facilities, many of which are also local jails and have a track record of substandard medical care. Also, immigrants in detention facilities have a much harder time getting lawyers.
– Tension between President Trump and Mexico over his border wall plans was probably inevitable, though not everybody expected it to flare up before his administration was a week old. After Trump signed an executive order Wednesday and promised to start building the wall within months, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto told his country in a televised address that Mexico "does not believe in walls" and will not pay for it, no matter what Trump says, the BBC reports. "I regret and condemn the decision of the United States to continue construction of a wall that, for years, has divided us instead of uniting us," he said. In other coverage: Peña Nieto said Mexico still offers its friendship to the US, but he didn't confirm whether he plans to go ahead with his Jan. 31 meeting with Trump at the White House, the Guardian reports. Senior government officials said late Wednesday that the Mexican leader is thinking about calling it off. CNN reports that Peña Nieto said he would wait for an evaluation from Mexican officials in the US before confirming the visit to the US. He also said he had ordered government agencies, including the 50 Mexican consulates in the US, to step up protection for immigrants. The Washington Post looks at five major challenges the wall project will face, including rough terrain and the fact that most land along the border in Texas is privately owned. In Mexico, people are furious and are calling for a stern response to Trump's plans, reports the New York Times. "It's like we are Charlie Brown and they are Lucy with the football," says former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda. "Peña is a weak president in a weak country at a weak moment, but he has to find a way to get some official backbone." Historians say the last president to anger Mexico this much was Calvin Coolidge, who threatened to invade "Soviet Mexico" in the 1920s. The Los Angeles Times looks at the details of the border wall project and other immigration-related actions Trump unveiled Wednesday. His plan to withhold federal grants from "sanctuary cities" like LA is expected to start legal battles that will last for years.