» Trump will visit border wall prototypes in California,

President scheduled to visit California in mid-March.

President Donald Trump is finally expected to go to California.

The president, who has rarely crossed the Mississippi River during his first 13 months in office, is scheduled to visit California in mid-March to see prototypes for a potential border wall and learn more about the construction, according to administration officials involved in the planning.

He will also visit Los Angeles to attend a Republican National Committee fundraiser, these people said, one of a number of fundraisers he is expected to headline in the next two months.

The president’s trip to California has been floated several times and later scuttled. Trump prefers to sleep in his own bed at night, and some of his aides have been leery of a trip to the border because of likely protests amid debate over the president’s support for new immigration limits.

Trump has criticized California officials in recent days, threatening to pull immigration enforcement out of the country’s largest state in retribution for what he deemed a “lousy management job.” He has also complained about “sanctuary cities” in California, where local municipalities do not cooperate with federal law enforcement officials.

Trump is not exactly a favorite person in California — he lost the state to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by 4 million votes. But Trump is close to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. And any border wall — his signature campaign promise — would run through California.

Eight border wall prototypes are on display in a dusty lot near the border east of San Diego. The 30-foot-tall barriers use varying configurations of steel, concrete — even spikes — to create ramparts far more formidable than almost anything currently in place along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

Trump has dropped his insistence that the new structure be a wall, rather than a fence, as U.S. border agents prefer something that allows them to see through into Mexican territory. Trump said last year that an completely opaque structure would leave agents at risk of being struck by sacks of drugs hurled into the United States.

“As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff ? It’s over,” Trump told reporters last year. “As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall. But we have some incredible designs.”

There has been some speculation Trump could try to use the occasion of a visit to the border wall showcase to stage a reality-TV-style selection of the winning prototype. But analysts say the Department of Homeland Security is likely to select several of the prototypes, because no single model may be perfectly suited to a border that spans mountains, deserts, riverbanks and urban neighborhoods.

The Trump administration is seeking $18 billion for border wall construction over the next 10 years.