mr. chairman , the gentleman from california ( mr. hunter ) xz4001910 talked about , in 1990 , when he came to me while i was still in the military asking me about landing mats to put up for the border . 
he and i have actually been down there welding to get that up . 
why ? 
why would we do that ? 
take this floor , if this was a farmer 's field and you had a single strand of wire that was lying on the ground , that is what separated the united states and mexico . 
we had truckloads of drugs coming across in a 100-mile sector that we could not stop . 
in 1 year , there were a number of rapes and a number of murders by the coyotes and people on the u.s. side of people trying to get across . 
when my colleague arranged to put up that fence , it stopped all of it . 
now , there are all kinds of ways in which you can stop something here in this body . 
we can have hearings and say we are going to do this or that , but with the fence area , these 7 miles , another way is to waive the environmental things . 
the gentleman from california ( mr. hunter ) xz4001910 also showed that president clinton did this . 
if we do not do this , my colleagues , we will not get it done . 
and it will help security . 
documents that we have captured from al qaeda show that they consider the border vulnerable , with cells in mexico itself . 
and so it is not just sealing off the border for security , but it is other things too . 
in san diego , in california , we have about 800 , 000 illegals in k-through-12 education . 
use half of that , use 400 , 000 . 
that is $ 2 billion a year out of california . 
that does not account for the $ 1.5 million a day for the school lunch . 
now , i can not stop those kids . 
i have been in those schools . 
there is no way i would take that lunch away from those critters . 
but we need to secure our border to stop the flow coming in . 
if we know , with the bill of the gentleman from wisconsin ( mr. sensenbrenner ) xz4003650 , who is there legally , it is much easier to tell who is there illegally . 
so i ask my colleagues to give this support because we really need to complete this . 
