Truck drivers in Mexico blocked northbound access to the World Trade Bridge border crossing into Laredo, Texas, for several hours Friday, according to Armando Taboada, assistant director of field operations at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Laredo Field Office.
“Traffic is now moving north and southbound at the World Trade Bridge, [the] protest and blocking of the bridge seems to be over for now,” Taboada said in an email to the trade community Friday evening.
The Mexican drivers were protesting a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) pilot program that began Dec. 7, according to several news outlets.
Instead of the World Trade Bridge, CBP’s new program reroutes all northbound empty tractor-trailers crossing the U.S.-Mexico border at the Laredo port of entry through the Colombia-Solidarity bridge.
The Colombia-Solidarity Bridge is 19 miles northwest of the World Trade Bridge.
Mexican truckers said rerouting empty trailers 19 miles away costs them time and money, according to news outlet El Universal.
Protesters also said that the “Colombia-Solidarity bridge does not have the adequate infrastructure to receive daily large numbers of heavy units that usually return through Nuevo Laredo.”
CBP’s pilot program to separate empty tractor-trailers from laden commercial traffic will be reviewed to continue or discontinue the program in June.
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