http://www.team4news.com/Global/story.a ... v=menu90_3

WASHINGTON Republicans will go into the elections with the message that they're fighting illegal immigration.

Tonight the Senate passed and sent President Bush a bill authorizing 700 new miles of fencing on the southern border. The vote was 80-to-19.

No one knows how much the fence will actually cost.

A one-point-two (b) billion dollar down payment for the fencing is part of a separate bill also on the way to the White House.

A homeland security bill Congress was completing today includes 380 (m) million dollars to hire 15-hundred more Border Patrol agents and money to build detention facilities that hold 67-hundred more illegal immigrants.


Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn voted for the fence bill. But they failed in their effort to amend the fence bill. They wanted to allow border communities to have some input in where fencing will be located and how much of it is erected in their areas.

Laredo Mayor Raul Salinas has said he opposes the fence and said he was concerned about how the bill might affect U-S-Mexico relations.