Trump trip seeks support for wall
UNITED STATES: US President Donald Trump has travelled to opposition territory – California – to fire up support for a wall along the US-Mexico border, a project that has encountered resistance in Congress.
Trump yesterday inspected eight wall prototypes constructed in the desert south of San Diego, as he fights to overcome opposition from Democrats and skepticism from some Republican lawmakers over the cost of a barrier that was a central promise of his presidential campaign.
‘‘Congress must fund the border wall and prohibit grants to sanctuary cities,’’ Trump said, referring to cities and states that limit their cooperation with federal authorities on immigration in objection to the president’s policies.
When asked whether he would veto a spending bill that would preserve grants to sanctuary cities or not fund the wall, Trump said he was ‘‘looking at it’’.
‘‘Sanctuary cities are protecting a horrible group of people in many cases, criminals,’’ he said.
House and Senate negotiators are trying to wrap up work on a
US$1.2 trillion (NZ$1.63t) spending bill in order to get it passed by March 23 in order to avert another government shutdown.
Lawmakers planned to include
US$1.6 billion (NZ$2.18b) in funding in fiscal 2018 for portions of a US-Mexico border wall, as requested by the Trump administration, Republican Senator John Boozman of Arkansas said. The amount is equal to the administration’s request to fund three sections of the wall.
Boozman said a plan to strip funding from so-called sanctuary cities would not pass muster in the Senate, where Democrats have more leverage to block legislation.
Trump’s tour of the sample wall sections at Otay Mesa Port of Entry stirred protests in a state where the project is deeply unpopular, as is the president. A Public Policy Institute of California poll released in January found that 73 percent of adults in the state opposed the wall, while just a quarter supported it. Trump lost the state by a two-to-one margin in 2016, the worst performance of any modern Republican presidential candidate.
Trump has maintained that he expects Mexico to ultimately pay for the wall, perhaps as part of a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has repeatedly rejected the idea. The issue has helped to sour relations between the two leaders.
In a tweet yesterday, Trump also raised the possibility of justifying the cost of the wall based on savings in government spending that opponents of immigration anticipate from it being built. The message cited estimates by the Centre for Immigration Studies, which favours lower levels of immigration.
‘‘The $18 billion wall will pay for itself by curbing the importation of crime, drugs and illegal immigrants who tend to go on the federal dole,’’ he tweeted.
The trip was Trump’s first presidential visit to California, the nation’s most populous state and an engine of economic growth. He also headlined a Republican National Committee fundraiser in Beverly Hills, where tickets cost as much as US$250,000 (NZ$340,000).
The state’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, sent Trump a backhanded invitation on Tuesday suggesting a change of itinerary, to add a visit to a construction site for what he said was the nation’s first true high-speed rail line. ‘‘In California, we are focusing on bridges, not walls,’’ Brown wrote.
Trump struck a different tone about the state’s needs, saying ‘‘the state of California is begging us to build walls in certain areas.’’ He said of the barrier that he wanted ‘‘to make it perfecto.’’
Brown’s government and environmental advocacy groups have sued to block construction of the wall, claiming that the administration acted illegally when it waived environmental rules.
The animosity between the Trump administration and California Democratic leaders was demonstrated when the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement brushed back House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senator Dianne Feinstein for criticising his agency’s work. Thomas Homan said Pelosi’s remarks ‘‘were just beyond the pale’’.
The White House requested US$25b for the wall as part of a longer list of demands last month in exchange for granting legal status to undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children. Democrats rejected the deal over proposed restrictions on legal immigration.
Trump has said he believes the wall would cost about US$18b, and that the rest of the money can go towards other border security projects.
US Customs and Border Protection solicited bids last year, using existing border security funding, to build eight wall prototypes, and awarded contracts to six private companies for mockups that are each 10 metres long and as much as 10m high. The agency is testing how well each prototype withstands attempts at breaching, climbing, digging and other factors.
Caddell Construction of Montgomery, Alabama; W G Yates & Sons Construction of Philadelphia, Mississippi; Fisher Sand & Gravel of Tempe, Arizona; and Texas Sterling Construction of Houston won contracts to build concrete prototypes, the agency has said. Additionally, Caddell, W G Yates, KWR Construction of Sierra Vista, Arizona, and ELTA North America of Annapolis Junction, Maryland won bids for mockups made from materials other than concrete.
Berkeley, Oakland and other cities have sought to stop doing business with firms involved with the wall, prompting the Associated General Contractors of America to ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to sue to prevent states and localities from denying contracts or divesting from companies that participate in the barrier’s construction.