Vital crossing set to reopen today
A remote Arizona border crossing that was shuttered last month to help strained immigration authorities cope with a surge inmigrants in the nearby desert will reopen today, U. S. Customs and Border Protection said Tuesday evening.
The agency did not explain why it had decided to reopen the crossing, and it did not say whether there had been any recent shift in the daily arrival of hundreds of migrants who unlawfully slip through gaps in the border wall in the deserts before surrendering to immigration authorities.
The crossing in the tiny border town of Lukeville, Ariz., was a legal passage between Mexico and the United States vital to workers, families and businesses.
About 2,000 to 3,000 people a day crossed north, according to the U. S. Department of Transportation. The next- closest crossing is several hours away by car.
The closure of the Lukeville crossing point Dec. 4 had crippled local economies in Arizona towns that rely on a steady stream of tourists traveling south to the Mexican beach town of Puerto Peñasco and had drawn condemnations from residents and elected officials.
Business had dried up at restaurants, gas stations and travel agencies along the way, and people who work and live on opposite sides of the border were cut off from family.
On Tuesday, residents and Arizona elected officials who had accused the Biden administration of mishandling a crisis greeted the news of the reopening with relief.
When Kari Garcia, 31, heard that the crossing would be reopening at 6 a.m. today, she said, “I almost cried. Now I get to go home.”
Before the closure, Garcia had crossed every day from her home in Sonoyta, Mexico, to her job at a hotel in Ajo, Ariz.
During the closure, Garcia’s 45-minute commute ballooned to six hours, after she said she had been forced to drive to a crossing two hours to the west and loop around. She said she had been sleeping at work in Arizona, seeing her four young children only on weekends.
“It’s terrible,” she said. In addition to reopening the port of entry in Lukeville, Customs and Border Protection officials said they also would resume some suspended operations at other border crossings, including allowing pedestrian traffic at the San Ysidro crossing in San Diego and allowing vehicle crossings on an international bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas.
In a statement, Customs and Border Protection said it would continue to “assess security situations, adjust our operational plans and deploy resources to maximize enforcement” against people who cross unlawfully.
Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona, a Democrat, called the reopening “welcome news” but reiterated her criticism of the federal government’s handling of the swell of migrants.
“This closure shouldn’t have happened in the first place,” she said in a statement Tuesday night. “Arizona’s ports of entry are vital to national security and trade, and it’s critical that the federal government sends more resources to ensure this does not happen again.”