"The old fence, 14 miles of salvaged metal, was a stopgap measure to block the favorite path of Mexican drug smugglers and illegal aliens," reported CNN on Friday. "It worked. Illegal traffic dropped dramatically."

This past fall, the House voted to add a 150-foot corridor with a patrol road along the border and a second fence inside the border. Also included: a provision to waive any environmental law that stood in the way in the interest of national security.

The Senate, however, wouldn't go along, CNN said.

Environmentalists are "digging in" over their concerns that the fence would be harmful to endangered species of plants and birds, and would disrupt Indian artifacts, such as seashell fragments.

Hunter aide Gary Becks told CNN that because of politically motivated delaying tactics, it's taken "more time to build this 14 miles of fence than it did to win World War II."

But Greg Abbott, a spokesman for California's Parks & Recreation Department, complained that the border fence would devastate a unique ecosystem.

"To have a little mesa this distance from the ocean with this sandy bay point soil is extremely rare," Abbott told CNN. "There's a whole little plant community to the West here that you won't find anywhere else in the United States."

Meanwhile, California's southern border remains vulnerable to al-Qaida terrorists, who, when captured, have told U.S. interrogators they intend to exploit lax border security to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the country.

Editor's note: