Mexico: transporters see slowdown in exports due to migrant crisis

Mexican transporters denounced this Saturday that exports of billions of dollars in maquiladora products will face delays in crossing Mexico to USA due to the rearrangement of US customs personnel to process migrants.

Manuel Sotelo Suárez, president of the Ciudad Juárez Transporters Associationsaid that the United States Customs Office announced that starting this Monday it will close its operations at the Córdova-Américas bridge in Ciudad Juárez, one of the four cargo crossings in this region, to send all its personnel to process immigration procedures.

The leader of the transporters says that the losses and the impact are millions for the companies located in the city, which in the past have already seen delays of up to 36 hours on that bridge through which 20% of the loads cross.

”In the month of April we had a similar situation, I think Córdova was closed to exports for around two weeks, and we were operating through San Gerónimo-Santa Teresa and Ysleta,” added the businessman.

Given the situation, he said, other routes will have to be found to carry out exports “you will have to go through Santa Teresa, through Ysleta and why not think about it? Now Guadalupe-Tornillo,” he said.

He pointed out that the latter, recently opened to cargo, is an ideal option for companies that are outside Ciudad Juárez, in the south of the state or the country, as they would avoid congestion on the bridges.

He added that this situation puts exports at this point on the border at risk. “The strongest impact is the one that the industry may have due to line stoppages in case the raw materials do not arrive or they cannot deliver their finished products,” he lamented.

For this reason, he stated, it is necessary to resolve the migration problem so that it would be more orderly.

Serious impactIndex Juárez, the association that brings together more than 200 of the 320 maquiladoras in the city, indicated in a statement that they expect a serious impact if the crossing of loads is delayed.

“Now we will have a restriction on the use of the cargo crossing of the Córdova-Américas bridge, due to the fact that human resources will be redirected to care for the large number of migrants so the industry will no longer be able to use it for export,” he indicated. the president of the group Sergio Colín.

He demanded that the Mexican authorities provide a solution to the immigration issue to avoid this type of problem. “It is important that the origin be reviewed and this impact situation be anticipated for Juárez and Chihuahua,” he said.

Data from the United States Department of Transportation indicate that in the month of July alone, 6,937 loaded trailer boxes crossed this bridge from south to north, that is, 277 per day.

According to data from the Transporters Association, each box carries an average of 100,000 dollars in merchandise, so the delays of hours to cross become millionaires.

Meanwhile, drivers are anticipating difficult days ahead.

“If with two open bridges there are long lines, imagine with only one there will be a lot of impact in times of up to 6 or 7 hours of lines,” said Mario Carlos while driving his tractor-trailer on the Zaragoza-Ysleta bridge, which is the one that from This Monday it will receive most of the trailers that crossed through Córdova-Américas.

”At the end of the day we are always the ones affected, we wait up to 8 hours in line. “It’s time, it’s fatigue, it’s annoyance,” he concluded.

(With EFE information)