Immigration Crisis Continues to Slow Trade Along Southwestern Border, CBP Officials Say
CHICAGO -- The immigration crisis at the U.S.’s southwestern border is stretching CBP’s resources, slowing customs procedures and impacting trade enforcement, CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said, speaking at the agency’s Trade Symposium in Chicago on July 23. At one point, the crisis caused CBP’s cargo processing time to nearly quadruple, Morgan said. “We know the criticality of this. We understand that this is a big deal,” he said. “But at the same time, we’re dealing with an unprecedented humanitarian national security crisis at the southwestern border.”
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Morgan said average wait times for commercial cargo processing at some of the southwestern ports earlier this year spiked to a high of 88 minutes, compared with the average wait time of about 23 minutes in 2018. Morgan said the surge in immigration forced CBP to send trade enforcement officers to border patrol, creating a shortage at commercial customs ports. In March, CBP surrendered more than 500 officers from southwestern ports because they had “to go and support United States border patrol,” Morgan said.
The drop in staff caused CBP “to reduce the number of open lanes at some of the southwest border” ports, Morgan said. The agency also suspended cargo processing at some ports altogether and suspended “weekend commercial cargo operations” at others, he said. “These actions led to an increase in wait times.”
The wait time decreased after CBP sent hundreds of officers from “various seaports, airports and northern border land ports so that they could back those individuals that we removed from the southwestern border ports.” The average wait time decreased to about 24 minutes at one point, but Morgan said the time is still “11 percent higher” than last year. “We still want to get those numbers down,” Morgan said.
Morgan, who was named acting commissioner less than a month ago, said his comments were part of what will be an increased effort by CBP to emphasize transparency. “We know that being open about what we do, how we do it and why we adopt certain rules and regulations will help your business and your bottom lines,” he said.
Morgan called the surge of immigrants “the largest magnitude that we have faced in modern history,” and said CBP has “real resource challenges … it’s stretching our resources thin.”
“I know the past few months have been painful for many of you,” Morgan said. “I promise, we share that pain. We know the stakes are high.”
Michael Dougherty -- assistant secretary for border, immigration and trade policy at the Department of Homeland Security -- stressed some of the same points, saying trade is being delayed directly because of the border crisis. “It means we have to take certain personnel off the line who are otherwise engaged in trade enforcement activities at other ports, maritime ports,” Dougherty said during the symposium. He said some “commerce may move more slowly” and inspections are being impacted. “It may mean that we don’t get as good of a look at it as normally we would like to have,” Dougherty said. “We just lack the personnel.”