mr. chairman , i thank the gentleman for yielding me the time . 
we started this fence about 20 years ago . 
we started it by building the first steel fence across that 14-mile segment between the coastal hills of san diego county and the pacific ocean . 
we did that because drug trucks were running that border at the rate of about 300 per month . 
we had about 10 people being murdered each year , along with numerous robberies and rapes , to such a high degree that the best-selling book , `` lines and shadows '' by joseph wambaugh , was written depicting this `` no man 's land , '' where nobody wanted to be after dark . 
so we built that first line , which was the steel fence right on the border . 
we then built the second fence , that is , the second tier of the so-called triple fence , after we passed a law signed by president bill clinton in 1996 . 
and it was president clinton who signed the bill waiving the endangered species act and waiving nepa because he thought it was so important that we have security at this , the most porous smugglers ' corridor in the united states of america . 
now , i can just tell you , as a guy who has worked on this thing from the start , my staff went out and found those 79 , 000 steel landing mats to build this fence . 
if the extremists had discovered this fence before we got the first 12 miles built , that would not be built . 
we stopped those 300 drug trucks a month , stopped them dead . 
we eliminated the 10 murders a year , mostly of undocumented workers . 
we eliminated the hundreds of rapes of the people who were coming through there because we built that fence . 
if the extremists had had their way , they would have gone to a sympathetic federal court , tied us up in lawsuits and we would not have had the fence . 
the secretary of the navy has written us a letter saying that completion of this project will enhance the security of our naval installations by reducing the potential threat environment created by an unsecured border . 
a few miles north of this gap in the fence is the biggest naval installation on the west coast . 
through this gap have come and been apprehended people from nations that sponsor terrorists , nations like north korea , nations like syria . 
this is a security issue . 
and for people to say this is an environmental issue , this is the state of play right now , all these trails you see have been hammered into that ecosystem by the smugglers . 
none of my colleagues have been out there trying to stop them . 
they have hammered these trails by the hundreds into the ecosystem , hammered it into the marshlands and the estuary lands . 
good biologists say it will take hundreds of years for these areas to be restored , not by actions of the border patrol or by our security apparatus , but by the smugglers who come across this particular gap in the fence . 
we need to secure this gap . 
the secretary of the navy recognizes that , president clinton recognized that and gave an unprecedented waiver . 
we need to complete the border fence . 
