POPE FRANCIS has criticized the immigration policy of US President Donald Trump, who intends to build a wall on the border between the US  and Mexico.

"Fear drives us crazy," he told journalists on the flight to Panama to participate in World Youth Day (WYD). During the trip, a journalist handed him a drawing of a young migrant who had died at sea and who had his grade book sewn into his clothes. The pontiff was moved saying he wanted to talk about it on the return trip on Sunday, January 27.

His visit takes place in the midst of the longest shut down of government services in the history of the United States, a paralysis generated by the promised wall, and by the advance of a new caravan of migrants from Central America to the north.

The first Latin American pontiff in history, the son of Italian immigrants in Argentina, has made the difficult situation of migrants and refugees one of the cornerstones of his mandate.

He reinforced his message during his address to scores of thousands of pilgrims  including hundreds of Americans on the Cinta Costera on Thursday,  January 24 when he  urged young people  to “discredit those who sow division or exclude those that ‘are not like us’ “