A broad coalition of almost 30 U.S. and Mexican trade stakeholders is urging Presidents Joe Biden and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to address migrant issues they said are impacting cross-border trade.
Led by the Washington-based Border Trade Alliance, the Texas Association of Business and the Confederation of Industrial Chambers of Mexico (CONCAMIN), the coalition on Wednesday sent a letter to Biden and Lopez Obrador asking them to work swiftly to improve the security situation along the border.
“The U.S.-Mexico border is a region of tremendous economic promise, but that’s all at risk if our governments fail to ensure that cross-border trade and travel is conducted in a secure, well-managed, properly resourced environment,” Border Trade Alliance President Britton Clarke said in the letter. “If the disruptions that have plagued the border region over the past several months are allowed to continue, then we can anticipate that states will act, often with responses that will cause shipping delays and put upward pressure on costs.”
Related: US-Mexico trade tops $200B in first quarter of 2024
The cross-border business community has been forced to navigate significant shipping delays at the border as the Department of Homeland Security and state governments have responded to spikes in asylum-seeking migrants with closures of ports of entry and new inspection protocols, the letter states.
The letter arrives about a week after the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) renewed controversial state-run safety inspections at the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge in El Paso.
The inspections, which began April 29 and reportedly ended on Friday, were stopping and inspecting all commercial vehicles arriving from Mexico.
Cargo truck wait times at the Ysleta-Zaragoza bridge soared to over eight hours at times in the general commercial lanes and for vehicles permitted for the Free and Secure Trade program lanes. Normal wait times are about 35 minutes or less to cross the bridge.
DPS initiated similar inspections in El Paso as well as at the Del Rio border crossing in South Texas and the Marcelino Serna port of entry in Tornillo, Texas, in September and October of last year and in Brownsville and Laredo, Texas, in 2022.
Mexico’s National Chamber of the Transformation Industry (CANACINTRA) told Revista Transportes y Turismo that the latest Texas-run inspections were costing the cross-cargo trucking industry as much as $35 million a day.
Related: Texas resumes truck safety inspections at border entry in El Paso
Texas Association of Business President and CEO Glenn Hamer said while the U.S. and Mexico are each other’s No. 1 trading partner, “we can’t take that for granted. If the two countries fail to address irregular immigration and illegal trafficking, then the trading relationship will degrade, and with it, our region’s global economic competitiveness.”
Over the first three months of 2024, illegal crossings at the border have fallen about 40% since soaring to record levels in December, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.