It is mind-boggling to me that the gummint is tossing the dice on this -- weighing the benefits of illegal alien labor against the losses of possible terrorism because of open borders.
Whoops:
I originally misread your statement as saying Hagel/Martinez voted no because they knew it was going to pass, I reread your post and saw that you said they knew it was NOT going to pass.
OK, that makes sense then.
There is no such thing as 100% secure - closing the borders would not even do that - there were hundreds of escapes over even the Berlin Wall.