Donald Trump hit back on Friday at global condemnation over a border policy that separated children from parents, dismissing the heartbreaking tales of migrant families as “phoney stories of sadness and grief”.
Instead he turned the spotlight on Americans who have been killed by undocumented immigrants by hosting a group of what he called “angel families” at the White House.
“Your loved ones have not died in vain,” he told them.
Mr Trump has faced days of anger for an immigration policy that led to more than 2000 children being taken from their families after crossing the border with Mexico.
His hardline policy has government agencies scrambling to increase their capacity to hold prisoners - including the US Navy which is drafting plans to house 25,000 immigrants.
Mr Trump made a rare U-turn this week, signing an executive order designed to keep families together.
However, he has returned to his blistering rhetoric ever since.
“We must maintain a Strong Southern Border,” he tweeted on Friday. “We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections.
The White House also launched an angry attack on opponents, accusing Democrats of exploiting a picture that showed a tearful two-year-old girl. Although many reports suggested she had been separated from her mother, it later emerged they had been kept together.
And later in the day, Mr Trump attempted to further turn the tables with the personal tales of people whose lives had been taken by illegal immigrants.
"You hear the other side, you never hear this side," he said, explaining that families separated at the border would be reunited again.
"These are the American citizens permanently separated from their loved ones. The word 'permanently' being the word that you have to think about. Permanently - they're not separated for a day or two days, these are permanently separated because they were killed by criminal illegal aliens."
What is happening at the border?
Some 2300 children are believed to have been taken from their parents since April when Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, announced a crackdown.
While the previous administration had used a case-by-case approach in deciding who should face prosecution, Mr Sessions declared a zero-tolerance approach”.
However, laws designed to protect children means they cannot be held indefinitely in jail and so they are taken away from their parents to be put in care elsewhere.
The result of Mr Trump’s executive order is confusion within his administration about how to keep families together while at the same time prosecuting everyone who illegally crosses the border.
"It's a big question. There have not been a lot of answers," is how Henry Lucero, a director of field operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, put it during a forum in Texas.
About 500 children have been reunited with their families since May, according to Homeland Security officials, but no one knows how long it will take the remaining children to be handed back to parents.
What is the solution?
Republicans have been scrambling to find enough support for a compromise bill that would reunite families, but win enough Democratic support to toughen border protection - and fund Donald Trump's wall.
Plans for a vote on Friday were shelved and finally pushed into next week. However, Mr Trump has thrown the whole exercise into doubt by offering little in the way of encouragement.
More beds needed in the meantime
On Friday Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a notice that it may seek up to 15,000 beds to detain immigrant families.
The US Navy is drafting plans to house up to 25,000 immigrants on its bases and other facilities, at an estimated cost of about $233 million over six months, according to the Associated Press.
The facilities, which could include tents, are described as "temporary and austere", according to an official familiar with a planning memo. It suggests the facilities be built for between six months and one year.