TIJUANA — The prototypes of the Trump border wall are taking shape this month in a sunbaked swath of scrubland abutting a run-down neighborhood of Tijuana, Mexico. Lined up next to each other, the 30-foot-tall concrete and steel sample barriers — some with extra-stout reinforced bases, others topped with metal spikes — certainly look ominous.
The requirements established to realize President Trump’s vision call for “a fence that is impenetrable, it’s unscalable,” said Roy Villareal, acting chief patrol agent of the San Diego border sector. “They can’t dig under it. They can’t cut through it.”
Even these big warning slabs of concrete, the teeming construction site, and police and helicopters patrolling both sides of the border weren’t enough to stop a half-dozen would-be migrants from hopping the existing fence this month and landing smack in the middle of the project, according to U.S. border officials.
Maybe the fence-hoppers were unlucky, or had chosen an ill-advised hide-in-plain-sight strategy, but either way, their experience is suggestive of how many Mexicans feel about Trump’s wall: No matter how it’s built, it’s not going to work.
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