Guest Column
Tighter Border Policies Keep Americans Waiting at Entry Points
By Julia Preston- New York Times
EL PASO - October 21, 2007 -United States border
agents have stepped up scrutiny of Americans returning home from Mexico,
slowing commerce and creating delays at border crossings not seen since the
months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The increased enforcement is in part a dress rehearsal for new rules,
scheduled to take effect in January, that will require Americans to show a
passport or other proof of citizenship to enter the United States. The
requirements were approved by Congress as part of antiterrorism legislation
in 2004.
Border officials said agents along the southern border were asking more
returning United States citizens to show a photo identity document. At the
same time, agents are increasing the frequency of what they call queries,
where they check a traveler's information against law enforcement,
immigration and antiterror databases.
The new policy is a big shift after decades when Americans arrived at land
border crossings, declared they were citizens and were waved on through.
Since the authorities began ramping up enforcement in August, wait times at
border stations in Texas have often stretched to two hours or more,
discouraging visitors and shoppers and upsetting local business.
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 United States through land border crossings from
Mexico.
W. Ralph Basham, the 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. Saying the new document checks were a "security
imperative," Mr. Basham called on border cities, which own many of the
crossing bridges, to invest in expanding the entry points.
In the meantime, Mr. Basham said, "A safer border is well worth the wait."
Wait times of up to three hours have also been reported over the past few
months at crossings from eastern Canada. Senator Bernard Sanders,
independent of Vermont, who held a series of town meetings with border
officials about the lines, said low staffing at border stations was the
primary cause there.
The longer lines along the Mexico border have been especially unsettling
here in El Paso, a humming border city long comfortable in its marriage to
Ciudad Juárez, the bigger and rowdier Mexican metropolis on the other bank
of the Rio Grande. Lines of cars and pedestrians at sunrise on the four
border bridges here are a routine for tens of thousands of people, including
many United States citizens, coming from Mexico on their way to school, work
and shopping.
"International bridge wait times continue to escalate, causing frustration
and concern in my district and across the nation," wrote El Paso's
congressman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat, in a letter this
month to the House Committee on Homeland Security in which he called for a
hearing on the matter.
One crosser who said she had struggled with the lines was Wilda Laboy, a
37-year-old American citizen who works in Juárez but is studying for her
high school equivalency in El Paso.
"I arrive late, and they don't let me in," said Ms. Laboy as she waited to
be checked through the Paso del Norte bridge crossing here. "I miss
classes."
Many families that straddle the border are feeling the strain. Border trade
groups say the long lines caught them by surprise and 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 with Mexico. "Now suddenly we have measures
that make it less efficient but don't make us any safer."
Richard Cortez, the mayor of McAllen, another Texas
border town that saw long lines this summer, said the waits had slowed some
of the 45,000 trailer trucks that passed the border there each month.
"There's a misconception that border communities care only about ourselves
and our own local businesses," Mr. Cortez said by telephone. "Our border
crossings affect trade across the United States."
Of $332 billion in trade last year between the United States and Mexico,
this country's third-largest trading partner, more than 80 percent of it
moved across the border by truck.
Starting Jan. 31, American citizens returning home by land will have to
present either a passport, or a citizenship document like a birth
certificate together with a government-issued identity card with a
photograph. The requirement is the next phase of the Western Hemisphere
Travel Initiative, which Congress adopted in a 2004 bill that enacted
recommendations of the commission that examined the Sept. 11 attacks. It is
intended to improve antiterror intelligence by gathering a record of
everyone entering the United States.
So far the new inspections are not systematic enough to yield measurable
results.
The passport requirement has been in effect since January for most citizens
returning to the United States by air, and it had a rocky debut because many
Americans without passports rushed to apply for one. Passport processing
backlogs overwhelmed the State Department, which was forced to relax the
requirement during the months of June, July, August and September. That
experience has created anxiety among many people who cross at land stations
as they anticipate the next phase.
Also in August, border officials said, the Department of Homeland
Security issued a directive designed to unify inspection procedures for
all the border agencies under its umbrella. It set an eventual goal, with no
fixed deadline, for agents to conduct a database query for every person
crossing the border.
As a result, queries by agents of both American and foreign border crossers
increased. At many older border stations, including El Paso, agents have to
enter some queries manually, taking minutes that quickly mount up to hours
when thousands of cars and people are waiting in line.
Luis Garcia, the El Paso field director for Customs and Border Protection,
said the new policy demanded a change of culture.
"These two communities are very interlinked, not only by trade and commerce,
but by family, religion, education," Mr. Garcia said, standing at the base
of the Paso del Norte border bridge as pedestrians streamed by, heading for
downtown El Paso. "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," he
said.
On an average day, some 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 issued
a memorandum directing his agents to gauge vehicle lines in deciding how
many travelers to query. If lines were over 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 great flexibility 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.
Border groups say they support tougher security measures but want the border
authorities to back them up with increased staff levels and technology to
avoid slowing commerce.
Funds for the Border Patrol, which scouts the border between entry points
for illegal immigrants, increased by 70 percent since 2005 to $3 billion. By
contrast, financing for border station agents, who processed nearly 300
million travelers entering the country legally by land last year, rose by 30
percent since 2005, to $2.1 billion.
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