Hundreds of Mexicans have protested against Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the US’s southern border by making a human chain.

Up to 1,500 Mexicans, many of them students, linked arms and waved banners along the Rio Grande, near the city of Ciudad Juarez.

“Hand in hand we show a national unity that makes no distinction between people,” said Senator Armando Rios Piter, one of several politicians who addressed the protest. “Mexico is more than a wall.”

The DPA news agency said Armando Cabada, the mayor of Ciudad Juarez, said the human chain showed people in the border region were more united than ever.

The mayor of El Paso, Texas, just across the border from Ciudad Juarez, also took part in Friday's protest. “We are one city,” Oscar Leeser said.

Mr Trump made construction of a wall along the Mexican border the highlight of his presidential campaign and signed an executive order on building a wall less than a week after taking office.

He said construction would start within months and that the US expected to be reimbursed by Mexico. Mexico has rejected the proposal, saying it will not pay for a wall and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto cancelled a visit to Washington as tensions rose.

“We have, as it is being demonstrated here, many friends on the other side of the river, on the other side where they intend to build this wall that will never separate two friendly peoples,” said former Mexican presidential candidate Cuauhtemoc Cardenas.

Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral issued the call for people to form a human wall.

“In the face of the intention of Donald Trump to build a wall we cannot bow down, because bowing down will mean things will go worse for you,” he said, according to Mexico News Daily.