--- title: Border Wall Prototypes Are Being Erected Outside San Diego description: Eight models for President Trump's border wall, each between 18 and 30 feet high, now stand on the border between Mexico and San Diego. canonical: https://time.com/4990609/border-wall-prototype-us-mexico-trump-immigration/ author: Eli Meixler article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-10-20T02:44:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T17:56:28.490Z article:section: Politics og:title: Here's What Trump's Border Wall Might Look Like og:description: Eight prototypes are going up on the border near San Diego og:url: https://time.com/4990609/border-wall-prototype-us-mexico-trump-immigration/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta36cf0dd62b8e228/6988e2c497cdffcca76b2efd/gettyimages-860607596.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5472 og:image:height: 3078 og:image:alt: MEXICO-US-BORDER-WALL og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's What Trump's Border Wall Might Look Like twitter:description: Eight prototypes are going up on the border near San Diego twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta36cf0dd62b8e228/6988e2c497cdffcca76b2efd/gettyimages-860607596.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Border Wall Prototypes Are Being Erected Outside San Diego > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Eli Meixler](https://time.com/author/eli/) ## Eli Meixler Oct 20, 2017 2:44 AM UTC  A man watches across the border from Tijuana, Mexico as prototypes of President Donald Trump's border wall are built outside Sand Diego on Oct. 12, 2017. A man watches across the border from Tijuana, Mexico as prototypes of President Donald Trump's border wall are built outside Sand Diego on Oct. 12, 2017. Guillermo Arias—AFP/Getty Images by [Eli Meixler](https://time.com/author/eli/) ## Eli Meixler Oct 20, 2017 2:44 AM UTC Funding for President Donald Trump’s [border wall](http://time.com/4974057/white-house-daca-immigration-border-wall/) may be mired in Congress, but along the U.S.-Mexico border, there’s been a little more progress. Eight models of Trump’s long-promised border wall, now with an estimated price tag of [$1.6 billion](http://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/10/19/companies-behind-trumps-border-wall-models.html), have been erected in [San Diego’s Otay Mesa outskirts](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-trump-border-wall-san-diego-20171018-htmlstory.html). Four of the wall models are made of concrete, four of concrete with steel reinforcements, and one is topped with spikes, [NPR reports](http://www.npr.org/2017/10/19/558730292/30-foot-border-wall-prototypes-erected-in-san-diego-borderlands). All stand between 18 and 30 feet in height, and are being built by six firms at a cost of $20 million for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which selected the firms in late September. Contracts range from $400,000 to $500,000, [Reuters reported](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-border-wall/u-s-selects-four-construction-firms-to-build-u-s-border-wall-prototypes-idUSKCN1BB2YC') at the time. “We want a better barrier. One that is hard to scale, hard to penetrate and hard to tunnel under,” says Roy Villareal, San Diego Border Patrol chief. Local CBP officials are aware that they’re [courting controversy](http://www.npr.org/2017/10/19/558730292/30-foot-border-wall-prototypes-erected-in-san-diego-borderlands) with the wall prototypes, saying it could even become the kind of national political magnet that drew protestors to North Dakota’s [Standing Rock Sioux reservation](http://time.com/4548566/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-sioux/) last year to protest the [Dakota Access Pipeline](http://time.com/4665114/dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock-easement/). Officials set aside a “free speech zone” for demonstrators, but none have shown up since construction started three weeks ago The construction has caught the attention of Trump, however, who [tweeted a video](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/920425069964349445) montage on October 18: The wall is still far from a reality, however. Congressional Democrats have demanded that border wall funding be removed from any [deal to reform DACA](http://time.com/4942123/donald-trump-daca-dreamers-democrats-deal/), the Obama-era immigration plan to protect some [800,000 undocumented immigrants](http://time.com/4941733/trump-daca-deal-enshrine/) who came to the U.S. as children. The state of California also [filed a lawsuit](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-lawsuit/california-sues-trump-administration-over-border-wall-idUSKCN1BV1NQ) in a San Diego court in late September to block the wall’s construction. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4990609/border-wall-prototype-us-mexico-trump-immigration/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4990609/border-wall-prototype-us-mexico-trump-immigration/"},"headline":"Border Wall Prototypes Are Being Erected Outside San Diego","datePublished":"2017-10-20T02:44:34.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T17:56:28.490Z","description":"Four of the wall models are made of concrete, four of concrete with steel reinforcements, and one is topped with spikes","url":"https://time.com/4990609/border-wall-prototype-us-mexico-trump-immigration/","keywords":["border wall","Mexico","Donald Trump","onetime","overnight"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta36cf0dd62b8e228/6988e2c497cdffcca76b2efd/gettyimages-860607596.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eli Meixler","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/eli/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta36cf0dd62b8e228/6988e2c497cdffcca76b2efd/gettyimages-860607596.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"MEXICO-US-BORDER-WALL","caption":"MEXICO-US-BORDER-WALL","creditText":"Guillermo Arias—AFP/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/border-wall/","name":"border wall"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4990609/border-wall-prototype-us-mexico-trump-immigration/","name":"Border Wall Prototypes Are Being Erected Outside San Diego"}}]}] ```