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 News from Around the Americas | October 2007 
US Border Security, Lines Grow
 Julia Preston - The New York Times
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| | The Santa Fe Bridge border crossing in downtown Juarez-El Paso. This bridge connects Avenida Juarez to El Paso Street. |
El Paso, Texas – Lines at U.S. border crossings are growing as U.S. border agents step up scrutiny of Americans returning home from Mexico, slowing commerce and creating delays.
It is a dress rehearsal for new rules, taking effect in January, that will require Americans to show a passport or other proof of citizenship to enter the U.S. The requirements were approved by Congress as part of anti-terrorism legislation in 2004.
Border officials said agents along the southern border were asking more returning U.S. citizens to show a photo identity document. Agents are also increasingly checking a traveler's information against law enforcement, immigration and anti-terrorism databases.
For decades, Americans arrived at land border crossings, declared that they were citizens and were waved through. Since enforcement was intensified in August, wait times at Texas border stations have often stretched to two hours or more, discouraging visitors and shoppers and upsetting local businesses.
The delays could remain a fact of life across the southern border for the next few years, border officials said, at least until new security technology and expanded entry stations are installed and until Americans get used to being checked and questioned like foreigners. Last year, 234 million travelers entered the U.S. through land border crossings from Mexico.
W. Ralph Basham, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, the agency that manages the borders, said longer waits had resulted from added security measures at border stations that in many cases were aging, outmoded and facing surging traffic.
The longer lines along the Mexico border have been especially unsettling in El Paso, a border city long comfortable in its marriage to Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city on the other bank of the Rio Grande. Lines of cars and pedestrians at sunrise on the four border bridges are a routine for tens of thousands of people, including many U.S. citizens, coming from Mexico on their way to school, work and shopping.
Border trade groups say the long lines are disrupting economic ties vital to both sides of the border.
"We are Americans who live at the border, with our economy and livelihood that depend on moving efficiently back and forth," said Maria Luisa O'Connell, president of the Border Trade Alliance, which represents businesses all along the border.
Luis Garcia, El Paso field director for Customs and Border Protection, said the new policy demands a change of culture. "These two communities are very interlinked, not only by trade and commerce, but by family, religion, education," he said. "When a person leaves El Paso to go to Juárez, it's like going across the street. They don't consider it leaving the country."
On an average day, about 21,000 pedestrians cross from Juárez on the Paso del Norte bridge, one of El Paso's four entryways. Mr. Garcia installed a canopy over the walkway, and water fountains and overhead mist-makers at the checkpoint to cool weary walkers on sweltering days.
As the lines into El Paso swelled in mid-August, Mr. Garcia said, he told agents that if lines were taking more than an hour, agents should run a query only for the driver, unless something about the vehicle aroused their suspicions.
But Mr. Garcia said he did not have many options to speed the lines.
"One thing I can tell you up front, as director in El Paso, I will not compromise security for facilitation," he said. |
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