SAN DIEGO, the United States, March 14
U.S. President Donald Trump will inspect the controversial border wall construction on Tuesday in the state of California, amid an intensifying feud with the country’s most populous state.
Trump is the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to skip a visit to California during the first year in office. He is expected to address the military after inspecting eight prototypes of his long-promised border wall.
The prototypes, made of concrete, steel and other materials, have been built in Otay Mesa in southern San Diego on the U.S.-Mexico border. All of them are 30 feet (9.1 meters) high and 30 feet (9.1 meters) long.
Wall construction began in September last year, which sparked dispute between Washington and California over immigration polices. The prototypes have been tested for months, as part of the evaluation process.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has not chosen a winning design amid unwavering uncertainties about the funding and the plan for the entire wall.
The Trump administration is seeking 18 billion U.S. dollars for the construction of the border wall for the next 10 years to add 316 miles (509 km) of new barriers and replace old fencing along 407 miles (566 km).
Trump has repeatedly pushed Mexico to pay for it in ways that has enraged the U.S. neighbor. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto called off his first visit to Washington after clashing with Trump in a phone conversation over the border wall funding last month.
Public access to the prototypes-displaying area has been restricted since months ago, but they are visible from factories and neighborhood across the border in Tijuana city in Mexico.
Though Trump has floated the idea of picking a design personally, the Department of Homeland Security has said that it does not anticipate a single prototype will be selected. A spokesman for the department said that the samples are expected to “inform future border wall design standards.”
Trump’s visit to California comes at a time when his administration and the Golden State are feuding over immigration enforcement.
Last week, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the state, its governor, and its attorney general, accusing them of violating the U.S. Constitution by passing three state statues that “obstruct or otherwise conflict with, or discriminate against, federal immigration enforcement laws.”
California’s laws, which critics say are “sanctuary city” statutes, limit the cooperation that residents and officials can or must provide to the federal government on issues of immigration enforcement.
“The State of California is sheltering dangerous criminals in a brazen and lawless attack on our constitutional system of government,” Trump said in his weekly address.
Democratic Governor of California Jerry Brown compared the legal move to “an act of war” with the Trump administration but he still invited Trump to visit the Central Valley where construction has begun on a proposed bullet train designed to operate between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“In California we are focusing on bridges, not walls,” Brown wrote in an open letter to Trump on Monday. But they have no plan to meet on Tuesday.
Besides the border wall, California has unleashed fierce attacks at the federal government for its stances on climate change and offshore drilling.
The state’s attorney general has filed over 20 lawsuits against the Trump administration.
California, America’s most populous state and the world’s sixth-largest economy by itself, is largely a Democratic stronghold. Trump lost it to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by more than 4 million votes in the 2016 presidential election.
On Monday, protesters held several rallies in San Diego, denouncing the border wall and Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.
Trump’s supporters and opposition groups are expected to hold rallies in both San Diego and Los Angeles on Tuesday, while protests are also being planned in Tijuana.
