Borderlands is a weekly rundown of developments in the world of United States-Mexico cross-border trucking and trade. This week: Arizona border officials want Mexico trade lanes reopened; Study finds ending US-Mexico tomato pact could raise prices by 50%; Texas port receives $20M to fund rail infrastructure project; and Accurate Transport opens logistics hub in Houston.
Arizona border officials want Mexico trade lanes reopened
Cross-border operators in Arizona are calling on federal authorities to return customs personnel to their posts at the Nogales-Mariposa port of entry and reopen trade lanes that have been closed for over two weeks.
“These policies that the Department of Homeland Security [is] implementing are severely affecting the way our country should operate on the Southern border with legal trade and legal traffic that should be crossing every single day,” Joshua Rubin, vice president of business development at Javid LLC, told FreightWaves.
Javid is a Nogales, Mexico-based shelter company that helps manufacturers set-up operations in Mexico. Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico, are sister cities along the border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who would normally help process commercial cargo trucks are being shifted to immigration duties to handle the inflow of migrants at Mexico ports of entry.
The result has been a slowing of cargo processing of trucks arriving in Nogales from Mexico, Rubin said.
“What we are trying to express to [federal authorities] is that we’re getting into produce season and we’re getting into the holiday season; we’re getting into the time of year that makes our economic relationship with Mexico … the most lucrative opportunity that we have here in the border community,” Rubin said. “On Monday, I had 18 shipments that I couldn’t get across the border because of the reduction of CBP personnel. I have a broker friend that told me he had 25 shipments that he was not able to get across on Monday, and had to wait another day to cross.”
CBP officials said they have been working to “decompress” the migrant situa …
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