Texas Governor Greg Abbott caused havoc at the border earlier this month when he ordered law enforcement personnel to inspect all commercial vehicles entering his state from Mexico. The searches were redundant – U.S. Customs and Border Patrol already conducts sweeps – and led to massive traffic jams along important trade routes.
Two hundred and forty million dollars of produce spoiled in the back of trucks as drivers waited upwards of 30 hours to cross the border.
Turns out, the inspections were a complete waste of time. No drugs, weapons, or illegal contraband were discovered. The Texas Tribune reports:
Over eight days, starting April 8, troopers conducted more than 4,100 inspections of trucks. Troopers didn’t find any contraband but took 850 trucks off the road for various violations related to their equipment. Other truckers were given warnings, and at least 345 were cited for things such as underinflated tires, broken turn signals and oil leaks.
DPS Director Steve McCraw said at a Friday news conference with Abbott that the reason troopers hadn’t found any drugs or migrants in commercial trucks is because drug cartels “don’t like troopers stopping them, certainly north of the border, and they certainly don’t like 100% inspections of commercial vehicles on the bridges. And once that started, we’ve seen a decreased amount of trafficking across bridges — common sense.”
But Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group for human rights in the Americas, said it’s not likely cartels stopped the smuggling of drugs because of the state’s inspections. He said many illegal drugs smuggled into the United States are hidden in small compartments or spare tires of people’s vehicles going through international bridges for tourists. He said if smugglers were trying to hide illegal drugs in a commercial truck, it’s most likely federal immigration officials found them before the trucks were directed to the DPS secondary inspections.
Abbott ordered the extra inspections in response to the Biden administration’s announcement that it will lift Title 42 — which The Tribune describes as “the pandemic-era health order used by federal immigration officials to expel migrants, including asylum-seekers, at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
Abbott called off the extra inspections after he said Mexico promised to increase its security efforts. But the short-lived policy had a major economic impact.
Business Insider provides key context:
One estimate from The Perryman Group, a Texas-based economic analysis firm, said the delays cost the US nearly $9 billion in gross domestic product and cost the state of Texas $4.2 billion in GDP.
The inspections drew harsh criticism from Mexican truck drivers, who blocked traffic at one of the busiest entry points into Texas earlier this month in protest. White House press secretary Jen Psaki also slammed the policy, calling it “unnecessary” and “redundant.”
