‘Border wall prevents bedlam’

Trump makes first visit to California as president

Donald Trump – making his first trip to California as president – warned Tuesday there would be “bedlam” without the controversial wall he wants to build on the border with Mexico, as he inspected several prototype barriers.

The trip to the “Golden State” – the most populous in the country and a Democratic stronghold – was largely upstaged by his own announcement that he had sacked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

On the other side of the border, a small group of antiTrump protesters vented their frustration, and announced plans to boycott US businesses over the frontier.

“For the people who say ‘no wall’ – if you didn’t have walls over here, you wouldn’t even have a country,” Trump said near the border in San Diego.

Trump repeated his insistence that law enforcement personnel should be able to see through the structure so that they could monitor criminal cartels that might be “two foot [0.6 meter] away” on the Mexican side. “Without a wall there would be bedlam, I imagine,” he added.

Trump inspected eight ninemeter models made of concrete and steel, erected side-by-side at Otay Mesa, an area in southern San Diego along the border with Tijuana, Mexico.

Each prototype cost more than $300,000 and, according to some estimates, the complete wall could carry a $20 billion price tag.

Congress has yet to approve the funding amid skepticism and Democratic opposition, but an administration official said the wall would save far more money than it cost.

“Congress must fund the BORDER WALL,” Trump tweeted after leaving the border.

California has been at the forefront of resistance to the Republican leader’s anti-immigration agenda and at odds with his stance on a number of other issues, from gun control to marijuana and the environment.

Trump skewered California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, saying he’d done “a terrible job” of running a state where the taxes were “way out of whack” and criminals were allowed to roam free in sanctuary cities.

He said he had seen estimates that the “intolerably high” illegal immigration costs came to $100 billion a year in terms of drugs, crime, education and social services.