Unified Cargo Processing Is Money Saver; US, Mexico May Expand It

Reducing wait times for cargo at the U.S.-Mexico border by 10 minutes would allow an additional $312 million in imports annually and increase production in Mexico in export sectors by 2%, a new report from the Atlantic Council projects.

At a Sept. 27 event discussing the report, a State Department official said more efficient checkpoints aren't just good for business, they're good for security and better for the environment, too.

Tobin Bradley, deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said that when he worked in Mexico, helping that country's government to increase efficiency at one of its internal checkpoints was his top directive, because produce was spoiling during the daylong backups at that stop.

Bradley said CBP and Mexico's authorities should be more ambitious than just trying to reduce an average wait time of 125 minutes by 10 minutes. He said he heard from one business of a situation in which the port it used went to unified cargo processing, and the faster clearance allowed the company to save $750,000 in just the first month after UCP began.

When Brownsville, Texas's port of entry sped up cargo processing, Matamoros, Mexico, directly across the river, saw a decrease in pollution because trucks weren't idling as long, Bradley said.

David Cloe, deputy assistant secretary for international affairs - Western Hemisphere, at the Department of Homeland Security Office of International Affairs, said the two governments are working to align their respective authorized economic operator programs. "The more we know about cargo, the faster it can move," he said.

Through the U.S.-Mexico High-Level Economic Dialogue and the 21st Century Border Management Process, the two countries also are evaluating whether they should expand unified cargo processing.

The Hunt Institute for Global Competitiveness at the University of Texas at El Paso collaborated with the Atlantic Council on the report. Roberto Ransom, its operations director, said that as researchers did interviews before writing, many respondents said more screening technology advances are needed, and many complained that understaffing is driving long lines.

Ransom said there needs to be more separation of passenger and cargo vehicles on roads in Mexico leading to the border. He suggested that designated ports of entry for fast commercial users should be shifted away from the main ports, to the outskirts of the city, and that there should be a line just for empty containers.

Mexico's Ambassador Esteban Moctezuma said that although Mexico is about to spend $1.5 billion on modern ports of entry, focusing on infrastructure alone is not sufficient. "We think about infrastructure but we also have to think about building trust," he said.