Of all the promises Donald Trump made on his way to the White House, the most concrete and vividly evoked was the “big, beautiful wall” that he pledged would transform the United States – a country whose self-perception was forged around the idea of an ever receding frontier – into a self-contained and impenetrable fortress.

And yet the prototypes of impregnability are themselves being treated with the kind of care one might expect for a Fabergé egg.

The city and county of San Diego have together spent more than $1m on security for the eight 30ft tall prototypes erected just north of the existing border fence, according to public records requested by the San Diego Union-Tribune. Included in that outlay is $118,092.66 on a chain-link fence to protect the towering hunks of concrete and steel that are supposed to protect American citizens from American citizens who object to their presence.

In a year that has seen unprecedented mobilizations and deadly clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters, San Diego officials could be forgiven for expecting chaos. Shortly before construction of the prototypes began, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued an intelligence alert warning local law enforcement that the site could attract protests on the scale of the opposition to the Dakota Access pipeline.

The wall plays to the imagination of what they think is happening at the border, but it doesn’t speak to the reality Ricardo Favela, local resident

But no such protests have materialized. The prototypes have attracted visits from dozens of media outlets, helpfully ferried to the site in buses by CBP, but have largely been ignored by local immigrant rights activists. Even as Trump’s visit looms, locals appear determined to turn their backs on what many described to the Guardian as flimsy “political theater”.

“We know how to mobilize,” said Christian Ramirez, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition. “We’ve had hundreds of thousands of people in the streets demanding reform.”

But when San Diego was selected as the site for prototype construction, Ramirez said the coalition of local activists sensed “a trap in which protests create a negative view of our community being belligerent and violent”.

Ramirez said: “There was this narrative and desire to create tension between protesters and law enforcement and we didn’t want to be part of that. We went the route of fulfilling our obligation as citizens to push our elected leaders to respond legislatively.”

To residents of San Diego, Trump’s fixation on the southern border is representative of a political discourse that is largely ignorant of life along the border, where family ties bridge two nations and “the wall” is as mobile as CBP officers in their SUVs.

“The border wall sounds good to people that don’t live here,” said Ricardo Favela, who was born and raised in Fallbrook, a small town north of San Diego best known as home to avocado groves and a notorious Ku Klux Klansman. “It plays to their imagination of what they think is happening at the border, but it doesn’t speak to the reality.”

Officials and journalists inspect the prototypes just outside San Diego. Photograph: Elliott Spagat/AP

Favela is the coordinator of Alianza Comunitaria, a rapid response network that warns residents of northern San Diego county – 40 miles and more from the actual border – via text message and social media alerts when CBP sets up immigration checkpoints where drivers are asked to produce papers proving their right to be here.

Since Trump’s inauguration, Favela said, the construction of the wall prototypes has been secondary to the “increase in rumors of checkpoints and confusion and fear” around CBPs roving patrols.

In December, seemingly credible rumors of immigration raids on a certain day prompted the Alianza’s network of volunteers to coordinate patrols of immigrant neighborhoods starting at 5am. Not seeing any abnormal activity, the group was able to send an alert later in the morning to let people know the coast appeared clear.

“We don’t know to what level Trump will go,” Favela said. “He has the full force of the Department of Homeland Security at his service.”

Quick Guide What is Daca and who are the Dreamers? Show Who are the Dreamers? Dreamers are young immigrants who would qualify for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (Daca) program, enacted under Barack Obama in 2012. Most people in the program entered the US as children and have lived in the US for years “undocumented”. Daca gave them temporary protection from deportation and work permits. Daca was only available to people younger than 31 on 15 June 2012, who arrived in the US before turning 16 and lived there continuously since June 2007. Most Dreamers are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, and the largest numbers live in California, Texas, Florida and New York. Donald Trump cancelled the program in September but has also said he wants Congress to develop a program to “help” the population. What will happen to the Dreamers? Under the Trump administration, new applications under Daca will no longer be accepted. For those currently in the program, their legal status and other Daca-related permits (such as to work and attend college) will begin expiring in March 2018 – unless Congress passes legislation allowing a new channel for temporary or permanent legal immigration status – and Dreamers will all lose their status by March 2020.

Technically, as their statuses lapse they could be deported and sent back to countries many have no familiarity with. It is still unclear whether this would happen. Fear had been rising in the run-up to last week’s announcement. Those with work permits expiring between 5 September 2017 and 5 March 2018 will be allowed to apply for renewal by 5 October. What does the recent ruling by Judge William Alsup mean? In his ruling, Alsup ordered the Trump administration to restart the program, allowing Daca recipients who already qualify for the program to submit applications for renewal. However, he said the federal government did not have to process new applications from people who had not previously received protection under the program. When the Trump administration ended the Daca program, it allowed Daca recipients whose legal status expired on or before 5 March to renew their legal status. Roughly 22,000 recipients failed to successfully renew their legal status for various reasons. Legal experts and immigration advocates are advising Daca recipients not to file for renewal until the administration provides more information about how it intends to comply with the ruling. “These next days and weeks are going to create a lot of confusion on the legal front,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, which has filed a separate lawsuit against the Trump administration’s termination of Daca. Joanna Walters

Across the border, activists with Comité Estratégico de Ayuda Humanitaria Tijuana, a group formed to assist migrants, drew similar distinctions between the physical border wall and the actual barriers preventing asylum seekers from entering the US.

“I don’t think the wall is the threat, per se,” said Paulina Olvera, who has been working to help Haitian migrants stuck in Tijuana get jobs or enter school. “Migrants know that they’re not welcome in the US.”

“CBP is the real wall,” added Soraya Vazquez, a human rights lawyer who said migrants attempting to claim asylum have been turned back at the ports of entry by border agents. “We’ve had a wall since 1985. For us, there’s no difference.”

The prototypes have proved fodder for some symbolic acts of protest.

Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s US-Mexico Border Program, said that his organization has commissioned the creation of eight pinatas of eight border-wall prototypes for a state of the union watch party.

Q&A What is the State of the Union? Show The State of the Union is the president’s yearly address to Congress and the nation. This is when the president gives his or her view (so far only his) on how the country is doing – and usually how well he is doing – while also outlining the legislation he will focus on in the coming year. The practice was established in article two, section three, clause one of the constitution – the clause states that: “[The president] shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” The first address was given by George Washington in 1790, in the then provisional capital of New York City. Washington and John Adams, his successor, both gave the speech in person, but the third president, Thomas Jefferson, decided to give a written message instead. Subsequent presidents followed suit until Woodrow Wilson personally addressed Congress in 1913. Since then almost all addresses have been given in person, some serving as key historical signposts. • In 1862, Abraham Lincoln used his State of the Union message to call for the abolition of slavery – something he said was integral to the survival of the country. • In his 1972 State of the Union speech Richard Nixon called for an end to the Watergate investigation. Seven months later he had resigned over the scandal. • George Bush introduced the fateful term “axis of evil” in his 2002 address to Congress, four months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bush used the term to tie together Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Adam Gabbatt

And in November, a group of artists and activists used the real-life prototypes as a canvas for light graffiti: using a spotlight and stencils, they projected images onto the walls from Mexico, including a ladder, the Statue of Liberty, and “¡LLEGALE!” – a play on words between the Spanish, which means “come in”, and “illegal”.

“There’s nothing like a laugh, a fart, an inappropriate comment – to break the spell that politicians want to cast over the public,” Jill Marie Holslin, a Tijuana-based artist who designed the “¡LLEGALE!” image, said by email. “So we wanted to do the same thing with the prototypes – they are absurd, and we wanted to make them look like the absurdly stupid things that they are.”