CBP’s deployment of 750 officers to assist with the the immigration crisis has customs brokers along the Southwest border worried about backlogs of trucked imports.
Customs and Border Protection’s deployment of hundreds of officers from land-border ports to handle the recent mass arrival of Central American immigrants seeking to enter the U.S. along the Southwest border has customs brokers worried about a prolonged slowdown of processing imports trucked from Mexico.
CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan during a visit on March 27 to El Paso, Texas, announced that up to 750 CBP officers from Southwest ports of entry will be reassigned to provide emergency assistance to Border Patrol to care for migrants in U.S. custody.
“This shifting of resources and personnel will have a detrimental impact at all Southwest border ports of entry,” McAleenan said. “CBP will have to close lanes, resulting in increased wait times for commercial shipments and travelers.”
The National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America (NCBFAA) and its members are closely monitoring the impacts on commercial cargo at the ports of entry due to the shift in CBP personnel along the Southwest border to deal with the immigration influx.
“We are all concerned about the possibility of delays in processing commercial shipments as that creates hardships for all concerned,” said NCBFAA President Amy Magnus. “We respect that CBP is in a difficult spot with responsibilities to protect the border and facilitate trade.”
For customs brokers operating along the Southwest border with Mexico, the reassignment of CBP officers from commercial cargo processing to immigration duties is being felt.
“For the port of Laredo, the largest inland port on the southern border, we have already started to feel an impact as of [March 27], the northbound cargo processing lines have stretched from a normal one to 1.5 miles long to two to three miles, for an unknown reason, but I suspect CBP is already starting to shift personal from the cargo processing areas,” Jose D. Gonzalez, president of Laredo, Texas-based customs broker Jose D. Gonzalez CHB, told American Shipper on Friday.
Gonzalez explained that it currently takes each CBP officer at the Laredo port of entry conservatively about 1.2 minutes to process a trailer, which equates to about 50 trailers per hour.
“At peak times CBP will have 13 northbound cargo processing lanes open, which equates to about 650 trailers per hour,” he said. “When we start to reduce CBP staff today at the commercial bridges, we will probably have to give up around one to two lanes, which is about 100 trucks less per hour and each 50 trucks creates a backlog of about one to 1.5 miles in additional wait times. So we are looking at around six to seven miles of wait times, which in time is about five to seven hours per trailer crossing.”
Gonzalez said, “The economic impact is immediate, where the long lines create delays in commercial traffic, as well as increased freight rates due to making up lost time with the wait times on urgent shipments, not to mention the safety hazard with the backlog that the lines create.”
A.E. Neto Roser, in charge of U.S. Customs compliance for Brownsville, Texas-based Roser & Cowen Logistical Customs Services, said his firm has not yet encountered any delays to import releases. “What I gather from CBP Brownsville is that they have a certain amount of officers just for commercial operations to keep the trade moving,” he said.
Due to reallocation of the 750 CBP officers on the Southwest border to immigration duties, CBP’s Tucson, Ariz. field office announced that March 31 will be the last day of Sunday service at the Mariposa commercial facility, which will affect commercial truck processing at the Port of Nogales.
“To lessen the impact of this deployment on legitimate trade and travel, ports are realigning their workforce and limiting or discontinuing some services,” the CBP Tucson Field Office’s memo said. “As events unfold, CBP will continue to reach out to our partners and port users to keep the community abreast of the any changes to operations/services at the ports. CBP will continue to monitor the situation and strive to restore services as soon as operationally possible.”
Customs brokers’ traffic concerns along the Southwest border were further compounded when President Donald Trump in a Tweet on Friday threatened to close the entire U.S.-Mexico border to put pressure on the Mexican government to halt the flow of migrants from Central America from crossing that country’s southern border.
“If they don’t stop them, we are closing the border,” Trump tweeted. “We’ll close it. And we’ll keep it closed for a long time. I’m not playing games.”
In the past, individual Southwest border ports of entry have been temporarily closed by CBP over the years to recover from severe storms and floods.
