Border trucking flows again as Texas DPS ends enhanced safety inspections in El Paso area

El Paso Times
Vic Kolenc, El Paso Times
October 20, 2023

Cargo truck traffic is flowing again across the El Paso-Juárez border after a monthlong traffic jam.

Traffic is flowing more smoothly again because the Texas Department of Public Safety has stopped its enhanced safety truck inspections.

“The impact is incredible” with the number of northbound cargo trucks crossing through ports of entry in El Paso County more than doubling Wednesday, said Miriam Kotowski, president of Tecma Transportation Services. It crosses dozens of cargo trucks daily from Juárez to El Paso-area ports of entry.

“This means we are back in business with Texas and the rest of the country,” Kotowski said in an email.

Cargo trucks heading into the United States at the Ysleta-Zaragoza port of entry Sept. 19 are backed up for miles.
Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times

However, truck shipments are still backlogged because of the monthlong crossing problems, she said.

DPS officers were checking every cargo truck after it went through the three ports of entry in El Paso County. Those inspections came after trucks went through federal cargo inspections. That snarled truck traffic and resulted in hours-long waits for truck drivers to get across the border, causing serious delays in Juárez factories getting products to their customers, and factories getting supplies.

The delays damaged the cross-border economy, area leaders have said.

Getting cargo across the U.S.-Mexico border became more difficult beginning Sept. 18 when U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, temporarily closed the Bridge of Americas in South-Central El Paso to cargo inspections so customs agents could help process the influx in migrants to the border.

It’s one of four ports of entry in the El Paso area where cargo trucks can cross into the United States. It reopened to cargo trucks Oct. 10, but the DPS inspections continued to snarl truck traffic, those in the industry said.

A Texas DPS officer inspects a trailer at the Tornillo Port of Entry on Sept. 26, 2023.
Alberto Silva Fernandez/El Paso Times

When the Bridge of Americas closed to trucks Sept. 18, the Texas DPS also resumed enhanced safety inspections of trucks crossing from Mexico into the El Paso area at the Ysleta-Zaragoza port of entry, and then extended those inspections to the Tornillo port of entry as its truck traffic skyrocketed in response to the Bridge of Americas' closure.

Traffic also skyrocketed at the Santa Teresa, New Mexico port, near El Paso’s West city limits, because the DPS can’t do inspections there. That also brought traffic jams to that tiny port.

About 3,700 cargo trucks crossed through the Ysleta-Zaragoza, Bridge of Americas, and Santa Teresa ports prior to the traffic jams, CBP data shows.

Beginning Oct. 17, the DPS went back to its normal cargo truck safety inspections outside the Ysleta-Zaragoza and Bridge of the Americas ports, Ericka Miller, a DPS spokesperson said in an email. That means DPS officers do random inspections, but don’t stop every truck.

It's doing no inspections in Tornillo, she said.

Trucks line up on the side of the road outside the Tornillo port of entry waiting for Texas Department of Public Safety inspections on Sept. 26, 2023.
Alberto Silva Fernandez/El Paso Times

DPS officials did not say why the enhanced inspections were stopped.

The agency had resumed enhanced inspections with the hope that would “deter the placement of migrants and other smuggling activity along our southern border while also increasing the safety of our roadways,” Miller had said in a previous email.

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego at a Sept. 26 news conference said he had no reports of immigrants or drugs being found in truck trailers inspected by the DPS.

Vic Kolenc may be reached at 546-6421; vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; @vickolenc on Twitter, now known as X.