Surely you all remember Trump's promise to build a "big, beautiful, concrete wall" along the Mexican border, and make Mexico pay for it. And presumably you also remember when he took office and Mexico told him no fucking way are we paying for your stupid wall. And then maybe you remember that he signed an executive order stating that he wanted to go ahead with the wall anyway.
Well, the Department of Homeland Security did their homework and concluded what everybody who doesn't own a "Make America Great Again" hat already knew: a solid concrete border wall would be a really stupid idea. Not only because it would be ludicrously expensive but, as Border Patrol officials pointed out, a wall would obstruct their vision across the border and make it harder to catch those bad hombres Trump is so worried about.
So DHS is set to recommend instead a fence made of reinforced steel bars, 18 feet high and 6 feet underground to prevent tunneling. Fencing like this is already used in border-crossing hot spots like San Diego, and the DHS plan would upgrade and extend these fences by about 200 miles for a total coverage of around 40% of the border. This would cost about $5 billion, which is considered reasonable enough to actually sell to Congress while giving Trump the chance to claim a measure of victory.
In my opinion this would still be a waste of $5 billion but not a totally outrageous one, and seems like a reasonable compromise. Whether Trump will go for it, who the hell knows, but some of the anonymous DHS sources said they would quietly discourage Congress from doing anything more extravagant. At the very least, it looks like they won't start building a real wall anytime soon.