Trump wants to visit border wall prototypes ‘very shortly’

President Trump said Wednesday that he is considering a visit to the United States’s southern border with Mexico in order to view prototypes for his administration’s planned border wall.

Trump said that he is looking at the possibility of traveling “very shortly” to view the prototypes, which were completed in October.

The border wall segments are set up near San Diego, Calif., and have been undergoing tests from Customs and Border Protection personnel. 

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“We have some wonderful prototypes that have been put up. And I may be going there, very shortly, to look at them in their final form,” Trump said in remarks made during a Cabinet meeting.

“We put up, as you know, six different varieties of walls,” Trump added. “We want to be able to see through. We have a lot of help from the Border Patrol and from the [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents. We’re getting their input on the wall because they — who knows better than them?”

Six companies were chosen to create prototypes, but there are currently eight versions. Trump has been saying the wall should be “see-through” for several months.

“You know, it has to be a see-through wall. If you can’t [see] through it, you don’t know who’s on the other side,” he said in September. “It’s going to stop drugs. It’s going to stop a lot of bad things.”

Trump on Wednesday repeated his warnings about border insecurity.

“That’s why we’re calling on Congress to fund the border wall, which we’re getting very close to,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re working on that. We’ll have a great wall.”

The construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border was one of Trump’s most prominent and controversial campaign promises, and the president signed an executive order authorizing the project in January.

Many lawmakers, however, view the cost and usefulness of such a wall as unreasonable, and have vowed to block its completion.