The future of President Donald Trump's promised border wall with Mexico lies in massive pieces in the California desert and he inspected the prototypes in his first visit to the state as president. En route to a fundraiser, Trump examined eight recently constructed prototypes for the wall near the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego in order to, as he has put it, "pick the right one." The president told reporters a real wall would stop "99 percent" of illegal entries across the border from Mexico and likened some of the people attempting to get into the U.S to "professional mountain climbers" in their ability to scale high barriers. Trump said a border wall is "truly the first line of defense."
Trump signed an executive order in January 2017 ordering the "immediate construction" of a border wall, though more specifics came a year later in a request his Department of Homeland Security made to Congress for the needed cash. The plan called for 316 miles of new fencing, and 407 miles of reinforcing existing fence over the next decade. The U.S.-Mexico border is roughly 2,000 miles long, and 653 miles of it already has some sort of fencing to block people and vehicles, according to the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a human rights group. The other roughly 1,300 miles of border lacks fencing, though the Rio Grande forms a natural border along most of those miles, according to WOLA.
In March 2017, Trump solicited design proposals from builders to create "physically imposing" and "aesthetically pleasing" prototypes that should be difficult to scale and offer features that prevent “sophisticated climbing aids,” such as grappling hooks and building handholds. A rendering given to NBC News from U.S. border officials depicts a multifaceted wall that features a concrete stretch facing the U.S. and a nonconcrete stretch facing Mexico that would allow officials to see through it.
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