Hard-line Republican candidates were able to fire up their base by denouncing illegal immigrants and urging the construction of bigger border fences.
Money would be used to fortify border fences, boost patrols, and acquire surveillance technology from the Department of Defense -- including drones and drone pilots.
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What they wanted was not anything that looked like an amnesty but tougher border patrols, and higher, longer fences along the border.
An estimated 3, 600 people have died crossing the U.S. border since the fences went up.
But our borders are just too vast for us to be able to solve the problem only with fences and border patrols.
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In more populated stretches of the 2, 000 mile (3, 200km) border, in California and Texas, long fences have been built and extra Border Patrol agents deployed.
When the Republicans ran Congress they rejected liberal immigration reform that George Bush supported and instead treated hard-working immigrants as criminals by funding security fences along the border with Mexico.
Four security fences and a team of border patrol vehicles deter improvised river crossings.
The bill calls for miles of fences, thousands of new border guards, a secure identity card for immigrants and a new obligation for employers to verify that anyone they hire is legally entitled to work.
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From Bristol, a state-designated music trail known as the Crooked Road zigzags through the wooded hillsides and meadows of South Virginia, past white picket fences and trout-filled creeks along the North Carolina border.
In between the two main fences is 150 feet of "no man's land, " an area that the Border Patrol sweeps with flood lights and trucks, and soon, surveillance cameras.
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