Reassignment of customs officers threatens busiest commercial land port of entry in U.S.
The assignment started as a feature on a liquefied natural gas company that is trucking LNG into the Mexican market. It ended up in a 6-mile line of tractor-trailers waiting to cross the border from Mexico into the United States at Laredo.
Out of the nearly $612 billion of imports and exports between Mexico and the United States in 2018, more than 37 percent came through either the Texas Mexican Railway International Bridge, World Trade Bridge or Colombia Solidarity Bridge in Laredo.
The combined trade activity at the three bridges makes the Laredo Port of Entry the busiest commercial land port in the United States.
Francisco García-Cabeza De Vaca, the governor of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, gave Houston Chronicle photographer Marie D. De Jesús and me nearly unlimited access to areas of the World Trade Bridge that his state controls in Nuevo Laredo. The pro-business governor wanted to show what happened when the Trump administration reassigned customs officers to help process Central American asylum-seekers in El Paso and the Rio Grand Valley. It was pretty bad.
Cross-border deliveries that normally take truck drivers 30 minutes or less were taking hours. A nightmare traffic jam that included at least two lanes of 18-wheelers extended more than 6 miles deep into Mexico.
At their mercy
Miguel Angel Perez-Salas, traffic director for the Mexican side of the World Trade Bridge, toured the traffic jam aboard an all-terrain vehicle — zipping down medians and fearlessly weaving through the lumbering, northbound trucks. Previous traffic jams have gone as far as 22 miles deep into Mexico and have been caused by severe weather, bomb threats that shut down the bridge and confusion over holiday hours. This time, the cause of the slowdown is on the American side of the border.
“The lanes are all open today but we’re at the mercy of U.S. Customs,” Perez-Salas said.
Engine noise and smell of diesel exhaust filled the air as the 18-wheelers slowly inched toward the border. A patch of yellow wildflowers in the median offered the only splash of color on a gray and cloudy day.
Perez-Salas oversees a team of more than two dozen men and women responsible for directing the 18-wheeler traffic. In addition to dealing with fender benders and semitrucks that either break down or run out of fuel, they also send drivers back to the end of the line if they try to cut.
“I know it’s dizzying at first but you get used to the traffic and you get to know the drivers,” Perez-Salas said atop an overpass that gave a bird’s-eye view.
Facing hourslong waits, truckers do what they can to pass the time. During slow periods, some get out and stretch their legs. With no public restrooms and long waits, some truck drivers have to get out of cabs to urinate. Others stuck in traffic buy tacos, snacks and drinks from vendors along the roadway.
Long, strange trip
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, DLaredo, is urging U.S. Customs and Border Protection to hire private contractors to process and transport migrants and end the reassignments. Out of the 750 customs officers who were reassigned, at least 300 of them came from the Laredo Field Office, Cuellar said.
“It is absolutely essential that we bring back and retain CBP officers at our ports of entry in order to allow us to process legitimate trade and travel in an efficient manner,” said Cuellar, whose district stretches from the western end of the Rio Grande Valley to Laredo and to San Antonio.
By the way, the LNG trucks made it into Mexico. But I’m not sure how long it took them to get back.