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CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – By dawn on Friday, the line of trucks waiting to cross the Mexican border to reach the United States extended over five kilometers and did not move.
Arturo Ornelas, a Mexican truck driver, was four places ahead, but his position of choice had not come without sacrifice: he had joined the line Thursday at 8 am and had spent the 22 hours that s were running to stretch their legs along their legs. his truck carrying a load of copper wire from a factory in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to a warehouse located in El Paso, neighbor.
But now his goal was finally at hand, and he could see the glittering lights of the American city through the neighboring border fence on the other side of the Puente Libre bridge.
"So close," he murmured, "yet so far away."
President Trump may have released Thursday his threat to close the US Southwest border, as a punishment for what he said, it is Mexico's inability to control illegal migration. But for a week, the border has actually been partially closed due to US staff shortages – costing companies millions of dollars a day, industry officials say, causing extremely long delays for people and goods trying to cross the border legally.
Last week, the Trump administration announced that it was removing 750 border agents from their usual missions at specific border points of entry and reassigned them to help cope with the increasing number of migrants crossing the border. the border illegally and sought asylum.
The redeployments have resulted in slower inspections – for passenger and commercial traffic – at major border crossings, particularly between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso; Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego; Nogales, Mexico and Nogales, Arizona; and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Laredo, Tex.
The delays, which began on March 29, were particularly severe for trucks carrying commercial goods from Mexico to the United States, with long waits that tainted production and delivery schedules on both sides of the border. According to the US Chamber of Commerce, nearly $ 1.7 billion worth of goods and services cross the border each day.
Mexican officials of the trucking industry and other business leaders have reported millions of dollars a day in lost trading and additional costs related to delays. Some Mexican companies have been forced to slow down or stop production due to delivery delays, they said.
Manuel Sotelo, National Vice President of the National Chamber of Goods Transport in Mexico, announced Friday that some companies even used the air to ship their products by air.
Businesses and union leaders have warned that if delays persist, they could lead to the cancellation of contracts and widespread redundancies.
Mr. Sotelo summed up the impact in one word: "Catastrophic".
The difficulties were particularly acute in Ciudad Juárez, a border town and major industrial center with more than 300 assembly plants covering various sectors, including automotive spare parts, mobile phones, computers and consumer electronics.
"In danger, 280,000 factory jobs," El Diario newspaper, a newspaper in the city, said on Friday.
In a letter to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday, the chapter of the Ciudad Juárez Business Coordination Council estimated that delivery delays would cost Mexican companies over $ 2.1 million in overtime.
The council also estimated that the delays for the passage of trucks from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso were established at eight hours on average. But many truckers have reported much longer delays.
Mr Sotelo, owner of a trucking company, said that on Wednesday he had sent 15 semi-trailers to one of the crossings between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso. On their arrival, around 3:30, there were already 200 other trucks in line. Twelve of his trucks managed to cross, barely reaching the cut at 11pm. when the passage closed for the night. The other three had to wait until the next day.
Under normal circumstances, he said, a truck can cross the border by two o'clock.
Business leaders said the September 11 terrorist attacks caused the only other border crisis that approached it. "After that, we had to wait until six o'clock the following days," Sotelo said. "Today, we are three times worse."
Luis Aguirre Lang, president of Index, a national group of manufacturing and export industries, accused Trump of "hijacking" the Mexican and US private sectors to put pressure on Mexico. "We are worried," he said.
The Trump administration has called the redeployment of its agents a necessary step to deal with an urgent crisis, especially in the region around Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, at the heart of the debate on illegal migration.
The El Paso area of the United States Border Patrol – which covers a 268-mile stretch of border crossing the two most westerly counties of Texas, including El Paso and New Mexico – has seen a huge increase in the number of unauthorized migrants trying to cross.
This case, as well as the consequences that resulted, were brought to light shortly after dawn on Friday for Héctor Núñez, a driver at a Mexican trucking company.
He and his platform were in the middle of the three-mile truck line waiting to cross the free bridge to reach El Paso. He is killing time with a colleague on the outside of their trucks, parked along a highway that runs along the Rio Grande, when they suddenly noticed that something was going on from there. on the other side of the river, along the border fence.
In a breach in the fence, more than two dozen migrants were sitting in a row in the dirt, surrounded by several border patrol agents. In recent weeks, undocumented migrants, often asylum-seekers in the United States, have crossed the river, barely a trickle of water at this location, and presented themselves to the US authorities to guard the United States. ditch permanently.
Mr. Núñez, 54, understood that this type of unauthorized crossing between legal points of entry was precisely what contributed to the extraordinary delays he experienced this week.
But he has widely spread his criticism. He blamed Mr. Trump for "strangling" us with his political style. he blamed President López Obrador for not doing enough to stop illegal migration across Mexico.
And he blamed the migrants for using Mexico as a "trampoline" in the United States, illustrating his remark by a leaping rabbit.
But he also said that he could show empathy with the migrants. "It's a dream everyone has," he said.
Mr. Núñez made a gesture towards El Paso. "I dream one day to have a trailer on this side," he said. "One day, I want to get to the United States and say," I'm an American truck driver! "It's my dream."
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