A Honduran migrant converses with US border agents on the other side of razor wire after they fired tear gas at migrants pressuring to cross from Tijuana, Mexico

A day after the US shutdown a port of entry on its southwestern border and shot tear gas and pepper spray into crowds of migrants to stop them from crossing illegally, Donald Trump has said Mexico should deport them back to their home countries.

Many of the approximately 5,000 migrants camped out in Tijuana, Mexico, are attempting to enter the US through the San Ysidro port near San Diego, California, in order to apply for asylum. US border agents are approving approximately 100 applications per day but tensions over the slow pace came to a head over the weekend.

Mr Trump - who also defended the use of tear gas - tweeted: "Mexico should move the flag-waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!"

Later, Mexico's foreign ministry presented a diplomatic note to the US government calling for "a full investigation" into what it described as non-lethal weapons directed towards Mexican territory on Sunday, a statement from the ministry said.

The decision on Sunday to use tear gas among crowds that contained a large number of women and children, was condemned by high-profile Democrats. Beto O’Rourke, who narrowly failed in his bid for a senate seat in Texas, said it should “tell us something about her home country that a mother is willing to travel 2,000 miles with her four-month old son to come here”.

“Should tell us something about our country that we only respond to this desperate need once she is at our border,” he wrote online. “So far, in this administration, that response has included taking kids from their parents, locking them up in cages, and now tear gassing them at the border.”

New York congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likened the Central American migrants to Jewish families fleeing Nazi Germany, declaring that applying for refugee status should not be considered a crime. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom, recently elected as governor of California, from where the CBP agents fired the tear gas, tweeted a widely shared Reuters photograph of a woman with two young children running from a gas canister.

“These children are barefoot. In diapers. Choking on tear gas,” Mr Newsom wrote. “Women and children who left their lives behind - seeking peace and asylum - were met with violence and fear. That’s not my America. We’re a land of refuge. Of hope. Of freedom. And we will not stand for this."

If you want to see how developments unfolded read below