BORDER/MEXICO/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “Seven months after the federal government asked for bids to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, the country will get its first glimpse of President Donald Trump’s vision, rising on a dusty patch of desert here.
Eight completed border-wall models will be unveiled Thursday [10-26-17] in a pageant of concrete and steel hosted by U.S. Border Patrol officials and led by Ron Vitiello, the acting deputy commissioner for Customs and Border Protection.
The towering panels, each 30 feet high and about 30 feet long, are planted just east of the busy Otay Mesa border crossing, dwarfing the existing, decades-old steel panels that sit at the border in the area.
But the fate of the proposed wall, which would stretch hundreds of miles of new barriers along a roughly 2,000-mile border, is in doubt. Congress hasn’t approved funding, California is challenging the project in court and some who live on the border object to the wall…
Mr. Trump has asked Congress for $1.6 billion for the current 2018 budget year to fund the first phases of the project, despite his previous promises that Mexico would pay for the structure. So far, lawmakers haven’t acted on the request and may not, which could mean the enormous panels could stand as little more than an unfunded campaign promise.”
-Alicia A. Caldwell, “Trump’s Towering Border-Wall Prototypes Unveiled,” The Wall Street Journal online, Oct. 26, 2017 10:25am