Trump at the border
President visits Calif. to view wall prototypes
SAN DIEGO — President Donald Trump on Tuesday stood alongside the prototypes of the wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, the first tangible steps toward fulfilling one of his most popular and persistent campaign promises.
“If you don’t have a wall system, we’re not going to have a country,” Trump said in brief remarks during his tour.
Later, he predicted to an audience at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar that the wall will be
“99.5 percent successful.”
“People won’t be able to come over it,” Trump told the military audience after getting his up-close look at the eight 30foot wall segments. “The drugs will stop by a lot, although we have to get a lot tougher with drug dealers . ... But that wall will stop so much.”
Trump toured the eight prototypes alongside Rodney Scott, the chief Border Patrol agent for the San Diego Sector and James O’Loughlin, the project manager. O’Loughlin carried a binder with information for the president about the prototypes. Scott showed Trump pictures of the area before and after the current fencing went up.
Trump said he preferred a wall design that allowed Border Patrol agents to see through the barrier.
“You have to know what is on the other side of the wall,” he said. “You can be two feet away from a criminal cartel and you don’t even know that they are there.”
Trump said he also preferred the taller walls, saying they acted as a deterrent to people crossing illegally, whom he compared to “professional mountain climbers.”
Trump said he noticed while driving to the prototypes, along the eastern suburbs of San Diego, that the existing border fence was filled with holes that were patched over. “It’s not doing the trick because they cut holes in it,” Trump said. “The fence is not strong enough. It’s not the right idea.”
In a news conference following his tour, Trump used a bit of Spanish to discuss picking the best design. “We want to make it perfecto,” he said.
Trump’s tour was monitored by about eight Border Patrol officers on horseback. Mexican agents watched from a guard house across the border.
Trump touched down at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego at about 11:30 a.m. local time and he boarded a helicopter to an airport near the eight prototypes for a border wall, his signature campaign promise. He toured the area until 1 p.m. After that, Trump returned to the Marine Corps airfield to make the remarks to members of the military in which talked up his “great wall” and called on Congress to take action against “sanctuary cities,” communities that have adopted official policies limiting or banning cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Such unconstitutional policies “shield criminals,” Trump said, and “threaten the safety and security” of the country.
“We can’t do that,” Trump said. “And that is why we are asking Congress to ensure that no federal funds subsidize this dangerous and unlawful behavior. We want to protect you and we want to protect all of our families. We want to protect our nation.”
On Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spruced up the area around the wall structures in time for Trump’s tour of the prototypes. Workers added gravel to the dirt roads leading to the site to make it easier to reach, and around the prototypes to make it easier to walk among them. They also propped up metal shipping containers on the southern side of the prototypes to block the view from the Mexican side of the border.
Mexican police announced that they would also secure the area south of the border. They would restrict access to the Mexican side of the prototypes for the duration of Trump’s visit, police said.
By 9 a.m. Tuesday, Mexican police had cordoned off approximately three blocks of the dirt road that runs along the existing border wall. Just behind the wall, which is painted with murals featuring pro-migrant and peaceful messages, the eight border wall prototypes tower, visible from the Tijuana side.
The neighborhood near this section of the border wall is industrial. About three dozen federal police were patrolling the area. Reporters from local and national outlets climbed onto roofs of homes and businesses to get a bird’s eye view of the prototypes.
The prototypes sit about 100 feet from the solid metal fencing that separates both countries.
On the Tijuana side, two men held up a sign that read, in Spanish, “Parks not walls.”
Daniel Watman said that instead of a wall, he envisioned a park similar to the Peace Arch Park at the U.S. border with Canada in western Washington state.
“The separation results in people not getting to know each other,” said Watman, a U.S. citizen who lives in Tijuana.
The trip is Trump’s first to California as president and, given his seemingly irreconcilable differences with the state’s prevailing political culture, he was expected to be met by demonstrators. Several groups had announced anti-Trump events, such as Nuevo Movimento’s protest march planned for Otay Mesa.
“The main message is to get it through Trump’s head that he’s not welcome in San Diego or California, period,” organizer Jenerai Del Castillo previously told the USA TODAY NETWORK.
At least one group, San Diegans for Secure Borders, organized a pro-Trump rally. A group of about 200 people gathered in Otay Mesa on Tuesday, waving flags and signs.
Arthur Shaper of Torrence, California, held a bullhorn and led some chants. A sample: “Build that wall, nice and tall. Round them up and deport them all.”
Shaper said he voted for Trump because of his promise to build the wall on the border.
“We’ve go to stop the drug flow,” he said. “We’ve got to stop the gang flow and the human trafficking.”
Melody Hurt, a 65-year-old retired teacher from Chula Vista, California, said that California used to be the most advanced state in the union.
“That’s what I want again,” she said. “I want our children to be able to go outside and play safely.”
Just after 10 a.m., the crowd started a group sing-a-long of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
Near the border-wall prototypes, several Trump supporters gathered on a corner behind a police barricade, waiting for his arrival. As a car passed, a man shouted from the window: “USA, USA!”
Near the San Ysidro border crossing, a crowd of about 75 pro-migrant protestors chanted: “No hate, no fear. Immigrants are welcome here.”
Jules Luna, who lives in the Orange County city of Westminster, California, wore a black beret, raised a fist and joined in the chants.
“I don’t really have any words to (the) absurdity of the building a wall,” Luna said. “It’s really just a monument to (Trump’s) ego and hatred and racism. It’s a senseless wall.”
Both rallies broke up shortly after Trump landed.
Even though the 30-foot wall prototypes tower over the containers, the boxes effectively blocked direct views of the ground north of the prototypes, the spot where Trump walked and inspected them.
Trump’s border visit marked his first trek as president to California, a deepblue state that overwhelmingly voted for his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and is being sued by his Justice Department over “sanctuary” immigration laws.
On Monday, the Trump administration pushed back against House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for suggesting that immigration authorities “terrorize” families with “unjust and cruel raids.”
Thomas Homan, deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said ICE doesn’t arrest “innocent people.”
“Our ICE officers are protecting the immigrant community,” Homan told reporters on a conference call. “You’re talking about law-enforcement people that get up every day and leave the safety and security of their home, strap on a gun ... to defend this nation.”
Homan also complained that California law prohibits ICE from picking up people from state and local jails.
“We should get access to all their criminals,” he said.
The Justice Department this month sued California over three state “sanctuary state” statutes. The laws ban employers and law-enforcement officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities and provide for a state review of federal immigration detention, which the Justice Department says amounts to California unlawfully trying “to regulate the federal government.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown responded to the U.S. lawsuit by accusing U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions of using “political stunts” to “further divide and polarize America.”
During his tour, Trump criticized Brown, saying he was doing a poor job of running California. “
“The place is totally out of control,” Trump said. “You have sanctuary cities where you have criminals living in the sanctuary cities.”
Trump was set to speak to members of the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. About an hour before the scheduled speech, a man in fatigues told a group of uniformed personnel to clap for the president rather than simply stand at attention.
“It’s not going to be all formal,” he told the men.”
On Tuesday evening, Trump was expected to headline a fundraiser in Beverly Hills to benefit “Trump Victory,” a joint fundraising committee benefiting his presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee.
Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, and Todd Ricketts, the RNC’s national finance chairman, were listed as hosts on an invitation that has been widely shared on the Internet.
Trump also was expected to take part in a 6:30 p.m. roundtable discussion with Republican National Committee supporters at the home of Shari and Edward Glazer, the co-chairman of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team.