DON’T MAKE BORDER DECISIONS WITHOUT CONSULTING EXPERTS
At first glance, it looked like a bombshell headed for the San Diego-Tijuana region and other communities along the border: a federal proposal to raise the frequency of border inspections to a level that could fatally slow cross-border movement.
Heaven knows events and decisions far from our region have repeatedly delivered shocks to California’s 60-mile boundary with Mexico and our eight U.S. and Mexican crossings. For instance, late last spring we suffered massive traffic back-ups in Tijuana. Passenger vehicle wait times in Ready and All-Traffic lanes reached four, five and even eight hours. The Securing America’s Ports Act, signed by then-President Donald Trump shortly before leaving office, envisions a new 100 percent inspection rate for personal vehicles — the current rate is 1 percent — and cargo trucks — the current rate is 15 percent. It requires the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to submit a plan to Congress no later than July, less than six months from now.
Today’s gamma and X-ray inspection machines cannot process a truck in less than 12 seconds. Imagine doing this for 3,500 trucks each day at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. A 12-second wait would add up to 700 hours of additional wait times daily. For autos, the wait would be increased by a cumulative 20,000 hours every day at our combined regional ports. Excessive wait times for cargo and passenger vehicles have already been a monkey on our region’s back for decades. They have robbed routine crossers (the vast majority of border travelers) of hours of their workdays and businesses of billions of dollars in revenues. The new law could dramatically worsen this situation.
But if we wade into the usual weeds of practice, policy and politics growing around virtually any border-related issue, it’s clear this legislation is not an ax ready to fall on border movement.
The current administration seems unlikely to ignore issues of border crossing fluidity. Its immigration bill includes a section prioritizing smart border controls by funding a plan to deploy technology to expedite screening and enhance the ability to identify narcotics and other contraband at every land, air and sea port of entry.
This signals the new administration’s sensitivity to crossing fluidity for both supply chains and individual crossers. This sensitivity could translate into a revised law that could ask for less stringent controls or the same outcome achieved over a longer period.
The potential short- and long-term effects on inspection times are hard to forecast. It would seem obvious that gamma and X-ray equipment throughput can easily increase current wait times. On the other hand, today’s current lines are slow enough that if a vehicle or truck had to be inspected while creeping towards the inspection booth, its wait time could conceivably not be affected at all.
The old saying is “You can’t stop progress.” It’s a reasonable bet that in no more than a few years machines will process people, vehicles and trucks at a much faster rate. Artificial intelligence, not officers, will make immediate decisions about travelers. Goods, autos and people would conceivably be inspected in a fraction of a second.
The law specifies “incremental progress” over six years to achieve 100 percent inspections. Critically, this affords the flexibility to develop a system that can adapt to the land port environment, potentially avoiding modifying wait times or marginally affecting them. The sixyear period also enables border authorities to make operational and staffing adjustments to avoid adding steps to the inspection process.
The Department of Homeland Security is required to estimate costs and projected impacts on crossing times, staffing, security and operations at ports. If the department presents data and models projecting prolonged wait times, particularly for cargo, U.S. businesses with critical operations in Mexico would loudly and persistently protest. Multiple border organizations would sound the alarm.
The scale of exchange between San Diego County and the Tijuana metropolitan area makes travel and trade through the ports of entry a cornerstone of our region’s shared economic, social and cultural life. Prepandemic, yearly traffic in our region included 112 million individual traveler crossings, more than the number of passengers using Atlanta-Hartsfield Airport, the busiest in the world. Forty-five million cars and two million trucks crossed annually, $49 billion in goods. However gradually, we can expect to return to those levels.
Any moves to add new or stricter conditions to northbound crossings now confront greater sensitivity than ever on the part of people who understand the border as vital to their way of life and binational organizations that believe in cross-border mobility.
In the past, policy makers in Washington and Mexico City have paid insufficient attention to many of our realities and issues.
Policy decisions have sometimes been made in haste, based on the “flavor of the day,” without consulting a broad enough set of constituents. These circumstances make the Smart Border Coalition’s mission — making eligible cross-border travel and trade more efficient — vital today and into the future.