Ed Royce: “This amendment will give badly needed funding to the border security fence as provided by the law in the Secure Fence…”

“This amendment will give badly needed funding to the border security fence as provided by the law in the Secure Fence Act. Congress authorized it last year, provided funding to get it started in the 2007 DHS spending bill. The point I would like to make, although Congress mandated the construction of 847 miles of fencing, to date only 13.01 miles have been completed. And as you know, it is supposed to be a double-border fence, and only one-half of the 13.01 miles is completed in the sense it is only one side of the fence. So the amendment being offered today takes funding made available in the bill for border protection and directs it to the fencing. This amendment will give the administration, I think, what it needs to construct the remaining portions of the border fence. It is vital to national security. I had a number of hearings down on the border when I was chairman of the Terrorism and Nonproliferation Subcommittee. But Border Patrol told me about the effectiveness of the fence. There are over 400 attacks on Border Patrol agents a year. They need this fence. They find it is a great force multiplier. It extends their capacity.”