A Mexican congressman took to extraordinary heights on Thursday to make a point about what he calls President Trump’s “totally absurd” border wall. 
 
 Braulio Guerra, a representative from Queretaro, posted a video of himself lounging on top of a 30-foot coastline fence separating Mexico from the U.S. 
 
 Braulio Guerra posted a video and photos of himself perched atop the wall. (Braulio Guerra via Twitter) 
 
 “I was able to scale it, climb it, and sit myself right here,” Guerra says in Spanish in the 2-minute video, as he overlooks a beach near Tijuana. “It would be simple for me to jump into the United States, which shows that it is unnecessary and totally absurd to build a wall … It shows how unnecessary this project, this political rhetoric from Donald Trump, is.” 
 
 U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily News. 
 
 Trump wall hits roadblock with $20 million in existing funds 
 
 Sencillo subir al #Muro pero son muchos los peligros para nuestra gente. Derechos Humanos, principios y dignidad son innegociables #México🇲🇽 pic.twitter.com/9PExn3RlnV — Braulio Guerra (@BraulioPRI) March 2, 2017 
 
 While Guerra boasted in the video about how “easy” it supposedly was to scale the fence, some social media users expressed skepticism. 
 
 Some speculated that two people seen in the video near the bottom of the fence could have helped Guerra to the top. In a subsequent photo, the same two people are seen sitting alongside Guerra atop the fence. 
 
 President Trump returns a salute upon his arrival at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia on Thursday. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) 
 
 “I climbed it in Tijuana, one of the highest parts. Even from a distance this looks very complex, but there are young people that go up and down at all times,” the congressman said. 
 
 Building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border became a staple of Trump’s campaign, and his supporters routinely broke out in chants of “Build the Wall” during rallies. 
 
 Gael García Bernal slams Trump’s border wall during Oscars 
 
 But Trump has run in to some roadblocks in making good on the campaign promise. 
 
 Trump's supporters routinely broke out in chants of “Build the Wall” during campaign rallies. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP) 
 
 Despite Trump’s repeated pledge to the contrary, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto continues to claim that Mexico will not, under any circumstance, pay for the behemoth border barrier, which experts assume could cost upwards of $20 billion. 
 
 That has left Trump scrambling for how to cough up the funds, and he conceded before his inauguration that part of his “beautiful” wall might end up being a fence. Some experts theorize that American taxpayers — not Mexico — will actually end up footing the bill. ||||| A Mexican congressman went to great lengths -- and heights -- Wednesday to illustrate why he believes that President Trump's controversial U.S.-Mexico border wall is "unnecessary" and "totally absurd." 
 
 Interested in Mexico? Add Mexico as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Mexico news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Add Interest 
 
 Braulio Guerra, a congressman from the state of Queretaro, tweeted photos and a video of himself perched atop a 30-foot tall fence that separates the Mexican border city of Tijuana from the U.S. 
 
 "I was able to scale it, climb it, and sit myself right here," Guerra said in the video. "It would be simple for me to jump into the United States, which shows that it is unnecessary and totally absurd to build a wall." 
 
 He adds, "It's easy, and it shows how unnecessary this project, this political rhetoric from Donald Trump, is." 
 
 Sencillo subir al #Muro pero son muchos los peligros para nuestra gente. Derechos Humanos, principios y dignidad son innegociables #México???? pic.twitter.com/9PExn3RlnV — Braulio Guerra (@BraulioPRI) March 2, 2017 
 
 In one of the photos Guerra tweeted, two other people atop the wall are visible. Guerra said they were climbing the wall while he was there. 
 
 Twitter/@BraulioPRI 
 
 Twitter/@BraulioPRI 
 
 "You can climb it with great ease, one climbs in an instant," Guerra says in the video. "I climbed it in Tijuana, one of the highest parts, even from a distance this looks very complex, but there are young people that go up and down, at all times." 
 
 It is worth noting, though, that Guerra did not post any photos or video footage of himself climbing the wall, so some in the Twittersphere questioned how he reached the top and how easy such a feat really is. ||||| As Boy Peers Curiously Over Border Wall, His Artist Asks: 'What Is He Thinking?' 
 
 One morning, when JR awoke, an image lingered from his dreams: The wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and above it a young kid peering curiously over. 
 
 A child just 1 year old, who has "no idea that's a wall that divides people — he has no idea of the political context," JR imagined. "What is he thinking?" 
 
 He had no answers to his question, but the question stayed with him — and eventually, the French street artist decided to give it form. This week, within days of the Trump administration's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program protecting 800,000 immigrants, JR erected a massive artwork towering dozens of feet above the existing wall. 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 The boy, hair swept to the side and focus drawn by an unseen object, peeks with evident interest from the Mexican side over the slats of the wall at Tecate, Calif., as if looking over the railing of his crib. 
 
 And as JR tells it, he didn't have to search long for the work's inspiration. While seeking residents willing to let him build on their land, he met a woman who was game for the project — and as they spoke, he noticed a little interloper eavesdropping on their conversation: her son. 
 
 "There was a little kid looking at us the whole time with two hands on the side of his crib looking at us," the artist who goes by the pseudonym JR tells NPR's Ari Shapiro, "and I was like, 'Damn he looks exactly like that kid I dreamed of.' " 
 
 With the mother's permission, he took the child's photograph, blew it up to gargantuan proportions and enlisted help to get the work built. 
 
 View from the Mexican side A post shared by JR (@jr) on Sep 8, 2017 at 9:34am PDT 
 
 The project was something of a change of pace for the artist, who typically works in a different manner — placing images of his own creation onto walls, rather than building around them. For him, walls have often been a kind of canvas, rather than a means of dividing people. But with this work, one of his goals was clear from the start: "Basically, we had to build a bigger wall to make this [border] wall look ridiculous." 
 
 Then, his work in California happened to dovetail with events in Washington, D.C. 
 
 After Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that Trump would implement a six-month wind-down of DACA, an Obama-era program that protected certain immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children, suddenly people began reaching out to JR on Instagram and elsewhere. And many of these new correspondents were people covered by DACA themselves, who fear for their status even as the wind-down is set to be litigated in court. 
 
 But that's not quite what touched him the most, he says: "Most of the people, if you read the comments, they were not talking politics or they didn't mention the name of the president. It was about people." 
 
 As a French national, he is only just "discovering this whole context," he says, and "by going there I get to learn and hear about it from the people and be able to engage in a discussion." 
 
 And he hopes that while the artwork is up for another month or so, discussion happens not just between people on either side of the wall, but actually through its slats — in other words, across the border itself. 
 
 Ultimately, he thinks of something he heard from the mother, who from her window now looks up to see the massive silhouette of her child every day. 
 
 "She said, you know, it's my son and I can recognize him, but I hope for the others, it represents any kid, any person — anyone that has dreams, and dreams that are not alienated by any political vision or any prejudice," JR says. 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of JR Courtesy of JR 
 
 "I couldn't wish better for the start of a discussion." ||||| A Mexican congressman apparently climbed a 30-foot fence along the US border to send President Trump a message: Physical barriers are useless for stopping immigrants. 
 
 "I was able to scale it, climb it, and sit myself right here," Braulio Guerra, a congressman from the state of Querétaro, said in a video. "It would be simple for me to jump into the United States, which shows that it is unnecessary and totally absurd to build a wall." 
 
 President Donald Trump's promise to build a wall along the US-Mexico border has been a hot topic in Mexico's political circles, where legislators and politicians have almost uniformly responded critically to the proposal. 
 
 The Trump administration, however, is already moving ahead with its plans, and is expected to solicit proposals in the coming weeks for "the design and build of several prototype wall structures in the vicinity of the United States border with Mexico." 
 
 Tump has said a solid wall would likely cost $12 billion, but Reuters has reported that the actual cost could be up to $21 billion. 
 
 Before perching himself atop the US border fence along Tijuana's beach, Guerra spoke with immigration officials and recent deportees, whose numbers could swell under Trump mandates to crack down on nearly all undocumented immigrants in the US. ||||| STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: 
 
 Prototypes of President Trump's proposed border wall are going up near San Diego. Each prototype is a little different. You can see the photos. One is a 30-foot-high slab of concrete and steel, another is a 30-foot-high slab of steel and concrete. Eight variations are all meant to pave the way for a wall that Congress has yet to fund. NPR's John Burnett is here for an architecture review. Hi, John. 
 
 JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: Hi, Steve. 
 
 INSKEEP: So what's it like when you go down to the border and actually get a look at these things? 
 
 BURNETT: It's quite a scene. The Border Patrol has created this media bullpen at the edge of the construction site. And they've been shuttling in journalists from around the U.S. and around the world from as far away as Japan and Germany to see the great U.S.-Mexico border wall. You put on these fluorescent vests and hardhats and watch cranes lifting huge sections of sand-colored walls into place. They're massive, as you said - as tall as a three-story building. 
 
 INSKEEP: Well, the president had talked about innovative designs. At one point, he said maybe it should have solar panels, different ways to stop people from crossing the border. Did you see any innovations? 
 
 BURNETT: Nothing particularly artistic or high tech about these walls. One has elaborate spikes on top of it in case an illegal crosser has a really tall ladder. 
 
 INSKEEP: OK, well, I know you've spent time on both sides of the (laughter) border. Let's hear what people down there told you about it. 
 
 EDUARDO OLMOS: We're actually at the prototype site, San Diego sector, where eight of the prototypes are being built. 
 
 BURNETT: That's Border Patrol Agent Eduardo Olmos of the San Diego sector. 
 
 OLMOS: Once these are built, they're going to be evaluated for different characteristics like anti-climbing, anti-breaching, anti-scaling, anti-digging, anti-tunneling. Also, they have to be aesthetically pleasing. 
 
 BURNETT: The prototypes have all the appeal of blast walls. Some models are solid reinforced concrete. Others incorporate vertical steel posts. On the U.S. side, no one is allowed anywhere near the wall prototypes because of security precautions. To see what people think about them, I crossed the border at the Otay Mesa port of entry and worked my way over to the Los Torres neighborhood of Tijuana. There's a ramshackle recycling business here in Mexico that looks directly onto the soaring concrete slabs. 
 
 Jose Avila Rodriguez is pulling wires out of the dashboard of a wrecked truck. 
 
 JOSE AVILA RODRIGUEZ: (Speaking Spanish). 
 
 BURNETT: "From the size of the wall they're building, they don't even want the wind to blow from there to over here," he says ruefully. His granddaughter Melanie plays with puppies in the dusty street. Her grandmother Juana fills a bag with plastic bottles and considers Trump's border wall. 
 
 JUANA: (Speaking Spanish). 
 
 BURNETT: "I don't think the new wall will deter people," she says. "How many years have they been crossing to the other side?" Border Patrol officials in San Diego say they need some kind of new obstacle. Illegal crossers have cut 1,700 holes in the existing steel mesh fencing in the past three years. Just in the past three weeks, a half-dozen Mexican men have been nabbed in the construction zone while the prototypes were going up. Roy Villareal is the chief patrol agent here. 
 
 ROY VILLAREAL: What we want is something that is better, that is, again, impenetrable, unscalable and not capable of being dug under very quickly. 
 
 BURNETT: Six construction companies that won a nationwide competition to design and build the prototypes have until the end of this month to finish the eight mockups. I asked Villareal after his agency selects its favorite designs, does he believe these giant barriers will actually go up along the 2,000-mile frontier? He doesn't want to be pinned down. 
 
 VILLAREAL: These prototypes are going to influence the next evolution of our border infrastructure. So it very well may not be what you witness this morning. 
 
 BURNETT: Border Patrol officials are not waiting for a new wall design. The chief in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas told me he's planning to build 60 new miles of barriers, if Congress funds it, but he'll use what's there now - rust-colored steel columns that rise no higher than 18 feet. The administration has asked Congress for $1.6 billion for the first segments of the president's border wall. 
 
 But it faces a number of obstacles. It's opposed by congressional Democrats as well as most of California's and San Diego's leadership. And lawmakers in Washington are being hit with billions in unforeseen spending for hurricane damages from Texas to Puerto Rico. Doris Meissner, a former immigration commissioner and now a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, thinks prospects for funding the wall look dim. 
 
 DORIS MEISSNER: The real issue with building a wall is what the Congress does, not what the contractors do. And the price tag on this is enormous. 
 
 BURNETT: The Border Patrol expected the prototypes to spark big protests. But since construction began, there have been no demonstrations. 
 
 CHRISTIAN RAMIREZ: We knew that this was political theater and that we weren't going to respond. This is much ado about nothing. 
 
 BURNETT: That's Christian Ramirez, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition in San Diego, which has organized local rallies against Trump's immigration policies but not this time. 
 
 INSKEEP: So what are they doing instead, John Burnett? 
 
 BURNETT: Well, Ramirez thinks the real fight is in Washington. And that's where Congress will decide what to do about funding the border wall and what to do about the nearly 800,000 dreamers, the immigrants who were brought into this country illegally as children. 
 
 INSKEEP: OK. I guess we should mention that while activists have been relatively quiet, they think it's much ado about nothing, President Trump seems kind of excited. 
 
 BURNETT: Exactly. On Tuesday, the president tweeted a picture of those massive barriers with the message border wall prototypes underway. 
 
 INSKEEP: OK. That's NPR's John Burnett in Texas. John, thanks as always. 
 
 BURNETT: You bet, Steve. 
 
 Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. 
 
 NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201804/165/1155968404_5764788785001_5764632359001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Trump ditches ‘boring’ tax script for Mexican rapists, illegal voting claims 
 
 President Donald Trump on Thursday ditched his “boring” prepared remarks at a tax roundtable in West Virginia, and instead repeated his claim that “millions” of people are voting illegally and boasted that he was right about the threat of Mexican rapists. 
 
 “You know, this was going to be my remarks, it would’ve have taken about two minutes, but to hell with it,” the president said, tossing papers in the air. “That would have been a little boring, a little boring.” 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 The event, at which the president and state officials were slated to discuss the recently enacted Republican tax law, quickly veered off track as the president doubled down on some of his most incendiary and unsubstantiated claims. 
 
 Trump, who in announcing the launch of his presidential campaign in 2015 denounced those he called “rapists” coming into the U.S. from Mexico, bragged that the caravan of immigrants making its way through Mexico in recent days had bolstered his claim. 
 
 The most reliable politics newsletter. Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. 
 
 “Remember my opening remarks at Trump Tower when I opened? Everybody said, ‘Oh, he was so tough.’ I used the word rape,” the president said. “And yesterday it came out where this journey coming up, women are raped at levels that nobody has ever seen before.” 
 
 A New York Times report published on Wednesday found that the caravan, which originated in Central America and has since broken up, largely consisted of women and children who were fleeing violence and crime. 
 
 Fresh off a White House declaration that the president directed officials to deploy the National Guard to the southern U.S. border to curb illegal immigration, Trump railed against “chain migration” and rebuked Democratic officials for not addressing border security at the legislative level. 
 
 The president also revisited his widely debunked claim that “millions” of people illegally cast ballots in elections. 
 
 “In many places like California, the same person votes many times. You’ve probably heard of that,” Trump said. “They always like to say, ‘Oh, that’s like a conspiracy theory.’ Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people. And it’s very hard, because the state guards their records. They don’t want to see it.” 
 
 Speaking alongside several prominent Republican allies from West Virginia, including Gov. Jim Justice and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Trump was lavished with praise onstage. 
 
 Jessica Hodge, a speaker who the White House said would save more than $2,000 because of enactment of the GOP tax bill, burst into tears halfway through thanking the president. 
 
 poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201804/1467/1155968404_5764800349001_5764794523001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" 
 
 “Thank you for listening to us. Thank you for fighting for us. Thank you for caring enough to allow us the opportunity to come here and tell you thank you to your face,” said Hodge, whose voice trembled as she spoke. “My little 10-year-old wants to be president someday.” 
 
 “It’ll happen,” Trump replied. 
 
 While supporters heaped praise on the president, the president derided his detractors. 
 
 He hammered Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for voting against the tax bill, suggesting that voters would have the chance to retaliate at the ballot box in the fall midterm elections. 
 
 “You’re going to have a chance to get a senator that’s going to vote our program,” Trump said. “That’s going to help you in so many ways.” 
 
 Manchin later responded by saying that residents deserved to know about their future security, from healthcare coverage and Social Security benefits to coal miners’ pensions. 
 
 “Instead of the political posturing back and forth, West Virginians deserve answers,” he said in a statement, “and the only thing that matters today is did these questions get answered.” 
 
 Trump wasn’t the only one to sound off on an electoral preference at the event. As the roundtable drew to a close, the president put the question to audience members, polling them on which Republican primary candidate they would back to challenge Manchin, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey or Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.V.), who flanked Trump onstage. 
 
 “Patrick and Evan, good luck. Should we do a little test?” the president said, to cheers. “Who’s voting for Patrick? Who’s voting for Evan?”
– Braulio Guerra decided words weren't enough to get his point across on how he feels about President Trump's proposed border wall, so the athletic congressman from the Mexican state of Queretaro apparently put his climbing skills to work. BuzzFeed first reported on Guerra's high-profile stunt: showing himself perched atop a 30-foot-high stretch of fence along the US-Mexico border in photos and video he posted on social media on Wednesday and Thursday. He claims he ascended the fence himself (though observers note there's zero proof he did it without help) and says his point was to show how "simple" it would be to make the full leap into the US and how "unnecessary" and "totally absurd" Trump's wall concept is. Per ABC News, Guerra says he went up the fence in Tijuana and that although it looks "complex," youth in that area do it all the time. One of the videos and at least one photo show two other people on the fence, with Guerra noting they were climbing up and down while he was there. Some are speculating that mystery duo helped him get to the top, though BuzzFeed notes Guerra does list competing in four Ironman challenges in his online bios. Guerra received attention for his ploy, some in the form of online mockery, with one commenter imploring him to stop his "cheap circus tricks" and another asking him to post visual proof he climbed up on his own, per BuzzFeed. Memes also arose. The New York Daily News tried to get US Customs and Border Protection to comment but hasn't heard back yet.