Customs and Border Protection told THE WEEKLY STANDARD this week that testing continued on eight prototypes for a barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border. The prototypes were commissioned earlier this year to give officials ideas for what types of structures they ultimately want to build. “Through the prototyping process, CBP may identify new designs or influences for new designs that will expand the current border barrier toolkit that CBP could use to construct a border wall system,” the agency says.

But are these designs an actual “border wall”? The optics of such a structure—“big, beautiful,” and all that, but supposedly imposing and deterring, too—were paramount to President Trump during the 2016 campaign. They’re less so now. Senators John Cornyn and Jeff Flake said Trump made clear to them on Tuesday that he has in mind what could be called a fence: not “a monolithic structure,” Cornyn said, but a barrier with a see-through component.