Rep. John Carter of Texas offers a long article about secure the border (for real) here. Bottom line:
Taking all the data into consideration, a deployment of somewhere between 25-to-50,000 troops would secure our 2,000 mile southern border immediately. Cost estimates range around $3 billion per year, a small fraction of the current $78 billion taxpayer cost of illegal immigration, even after...
... signatories are Cathy McMorris Rodgers, John Carter, Pete Sessions, David Dreier, Kevin McCarthy, Roy Blunt, John Cornyn (the other half of the Cornyn-Kyl amnesty), and John Thune.
Rather than supporting amnesty, they've decided not to say anything about immigration but instead their initial focus will be on the economy, healthcare, education, energy, and national security. The problem is that...