WALLS AND WAILS

Looking at Trump's 'beautiful wall'.

According to the White House, a ''great'' and ''beautiful'' wall is to rise over Otay Mesa in eastern San Diego. Calif.' modeled after-

One of the eight enormous prototypes on display there- that are visible for miles around. I thought I could go see and lay hands on the slabs, writes author Luis Alberto Urea.

So on a recent visit to San Diego, I went to the Otay Mesa border crossing and drove a maze of parched industrial alleys and postapocalyptic ''Mad Max'' landscapes - trying to find these monuments to President Trump vision of the future.

Frustrated by their mirage-like distance, I finally parked at the end of a road from which I could see the original border fence stretching into the distance, with-

Houses built up against it on the Mexican side and nothing but desert on the American side.

After some quick research, I realized that you cannot visit the proposed wall sections without  Border Patrol approval. The prototypes are inside a construction site surrounded by razor wire.

Turns out, the government is worried about protesters.

In other words, taxpayers money is being used to guard the prototypes not against the Mexicans, but against.................taxpayers.

The San Diego Police Department reportedly spent $227,000 in overtime last year so officers could protect the site, plus $5,000 to cover their meals.

Otay Mesa, right along the Mexican border, was once inhabited by the Kumeyaay Indians. Their nation extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Colorado River. Tribal historian say they lived there for 12,000 years.

Of course, that was before undocumented immigrants invaded, and brought with them parking lots, McDonald's and endless storage units to tame the land.

A new border divided the  Kumeyaay's land, and cavalry in white Border Patrol trucks took charge. 

The Supreme ruled last Monday that the trump administration can't end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young immigrant's this month, as it wanted to do. 

So the president will combat immigration with fear tactics and the beginnings of the Great Wall of Trump, which he will visit in mid-March.

Critics are calling this trip, his first visit to California since the election, Mr. Trump's ''hallucination tour.''