WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he plans to visit the U.S.-Mexico border early next year before he delivers his State of the Union address.

Trump, who made the remarks during a surprise visit to Iraq the day after Christmas, has been pressing lawmakers for additional money for his proposed border wall. Funding for the wall is at the center of an ongoing partial government shutdown.

The president told reporters that he plans on “going to the wall” on the Southwest Border for what he described as a “ground breaking.”

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Trump traveled to San Diego in May to view prototypes of his proposed wall. Congress has approved additional money for border security but has specifically prohibited any of it from being spent on new wall designs.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, in an interview earlier this week with USA TODAY, accused President Donald Trump of using “scare tactics” to build support for his proposed U.S.-Mexican border wall, which she joked had been reduced from a giant, cement structure “to, I think, a beaded curtain.”