Trump to send thousands of troops to border as Mexico spat heats up

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would send thousands of National Guard troops to the southern border, amid a widening spat with his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto.

The anti-immigration president said the National Guard deployment would range from 2,000 to 4,000 troops, and he would "probably" keep many personnel on the border until his wall is built -- spelling out a lengthy mission.

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The announcement capped a day of developments in Mexico, where the caravan of Central American migrants whose trek toward the United States had infuriated Trump began breaking up.

And Mexican President Pena Nieto said Trump's "threatening attitudes and a lack of respect" were unjustified.

The decision to send National Guard forces to the border on an open-ended deployment also raised questions about who will fund the mission.

The Pentagon could not say where the money would come from and Trump admitted the White House was still "looking at" costs.

If 4,000 troops were deployed, that would be about double what the United States currently has in Syria and about half as many as the number of US troops in Iraq.

The National Guard has previously been deployed to help patrol the southern border, including in 2010 under former president Barack Obama, and from 2006-2008 under George W. Bush. Both deployments were limited to around a year.

In a sign of the Pentagon's unpreparedness for Trump's initial border directive, which came Tuesday, just hours before the commander-in-chief announced the size of the troop deployment, military officials said they had no idea how many Guardsmen would go to the border, whether they will be armed, when they will deploy and how long they will be there.

The caravan in Mexico, which numbered more than 1,000 Hondurans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans, began breaking up after the activists organizing it said it had abandoned its goal of reaching the US border and would end its activities with a rally in Mexico City.

Trump had threatened to axe what he called Mexico's "cash cow," the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), if the Mexican authorities did not stop the migrants.

The ongoing talks on modernizing NAFTA have also strained ties between the two countries, as well as Canada, the third member of the agreement -- though the three countries have recently indicated they are close to reaching a new deal.