The White House is reported to be preparing the ground for Donald Trump to declare a national emergency and has instructed the army’s corps of engineers to look into its appropriations for unspent money to fund the president’s wall, which he pitched in a Thursday visit to the border.

Negotiations with Democrats are stalemated, a compromise package mooted by a group of Republican lawmakers has failed to find traction with the White House, and with few other proposals on the table, talk of a national emergency has gained ground, especially among Trump’s allies.

Trump himself is not averse to it as he has made clear over the past few days, but he has sought to demonstrate a preference for resolving the stalemate through negotiations, even as he walked out of the last round, ending it with a perfunctory “bye-bye” because it was a “total waste of time”.

“The way he was killed, what my family’s going through right now, I do not want any other family law enforcement person to go through,” said Reggie Singh, brother of Ronil Singh, the Fijian American police officer of Indian ancestry killed by an illegal immigrant in California on Christmas Eve. Singh was 33.

During the border visit, he sought to drum up support for the wall by doubling down on a narrative of a humanitarian and security crisis, which has been called out repeatedly for exaggeration and misrepresentation of facts, and through emotional endorsements from relatives of a victim of crimes by illegal immigrants.

“It breaks my heart and no one should ever ever have to go through that,” Singh added and expressed his support, and his family’s, to any effort and initiative to prevent these incidents.

Trump’s border visit, however, did not help his case in Washington DC, where Democrats controlling the House of Representatives remained opposed to the wall and Republicans who control the Senate, saw their compromise package rejected by the president before it got off the starting block.“I hope it works,” he added, ominously signalling the potholes ahead.