Mexico will host its first high-profile Donald Trump envoys this week with at least one consolation: the proposed border wall is itself walled in, for now, by Washington bureaucracy.  Federal agencies are reportedly resisting the idea and Congress is hesitant to fund it, leaving the president fighting a lonely battle to keep his campaign promise.

Instead of a 2,000-mile “big, beautiful wall”, Trump may emerge from Washington’s policy labyrinth with a fence covering a few hundred miles. “He hasn’t made any progress other than to say ‘we’re going to do it’,” said Seth Stodder, a former senior homeland security official who focused on border security under the Obama and Bush administrations. “They’re pretty far away. I don’t think they’ve made much progress.”(the guardian)…[+]