Mayor Chad foster City of Eagle Pass Chairman Texas Border Coalition

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Mayor Chad fosterCity of Eagle PassChairman
Texas Border Coalition

• Border Crossings

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• As elected pubic officials voicing the concerns
  of the U.S. citizens of cities and counties along
  the Texas-Mexico border, we have invested
  countless hours and funds from our pubic
  treasuries in order to bring forth this proposal.
  We take great pride in our communities efforts
  to improve our region's ability to serve our
  nation's interest. We have built bridges,
  invested in security, and provided civic projects
  to assist our country in its ability to conduct
  international business and trade with other
  countries around the world.  We are dedicated,
  individually and collectively, to the protection
  of our country's national security and its
  economic strength and growth.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• The serious and rising delays of pedestrian and
  vehicular traffic on the Texas-Mexico border
  ports of entry are harming the local, state, and
  national economies. Current U.S. policies and
  procedures are to blame and we must act now to
  relieve the delays as we move into another
  demanding year of economic stress and hardship.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• It has been reported that anywhere between five
  and forty percent of local economic retail
  activity in the Texas border counties depends on
  cross-border traffic. This activity is not solely
  limited to border counties foreign visitors
  entering the United States from border ports of
  entry often account for substantial sales revenue
  in San Antonio, New Braunfels, Austin, Dallas,
  Houston and Fort Worth.  Since 80 percent of all
  border trade - mostly in the form of freight
  related to manufacturing and logistics activities
  - moves through Texas into other states, border
  delays is also injuring the national economy from
  Tacoma to Bangor to Detroit.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• The business and traffic delays are directly a
  result of our federal governments policies and
  programs.  Prior to the September 11, 2001
  attacks on New York and Washington, border wait
  times were increasing as a result of greater
  enforcement and anti-terrorism tactics and
  policies.  Since September 11, wait times
  initially fell along with economic activity and
  then grew at an accelerated pace as more demands
  of repeated inspections and non-productive
  policies were implemented.  Now, over the past
  year, the Department of Homeland Security has
  implemented policies that appear to cause more
  interference in business trade than to capture
  those who can cause harm to our country. The
  border delays have risen exponentially and are
  reducing America's economic growth. As the
  retail, logistics and manufacturing sectors move
  into the Christmas sales season, the growth in
  border delays threaten an untenable impact that
  U.S. Congress and the Administration have a
  responsibility to address before it becomes a
  catastrophic to U.S. citizens and our
  international business and trade.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• There are long-term solutions that the Texas
  Border Coalition has recommended and continues to
  advocate dealing with technology, infrastructure,
  and personnel at our ports of entry.  At this
  moment in time, however, we are most concerned
  about the economic survival over the next several
  months of our communities and the communities
  across Texas and the nation that we support. We
  strongly believe that the following proposals of
  interim changes are consistent with the current
  security posture of our nation.  We reject the
  notion that economic and national security exists
  in opposition to each other.  Based on our
  decades of knowledge and experience, we know that
  effective and well-communicated policies will
  provide for an increase of economic growth and
  security.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• First and foremost, we must increase the number
  of land and inspection sites at each port of
  entry.  To do so, we need inspection personnel
  deployed to the front lines.  We recommend an
  immediate cancellation of all temporary duty
  assignments (TDY) to headquarters that are in a
  permanent rotating status. These TDY's draw many
  front-line personnel to Washington, creating
  shortages of personnel needed to protect our
  border and its trade functions in a safe and
  expeditious manner.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• We also recommend permanent reassignment of GS
  11's from deskwork that contributes little to our
  national security to front line work on our ports
  of entry. In this context, we also recommend a
  moratorium on upper-line promotions to GS 13, 14,
  15, in order to stop the shortage of employees.
  This will stop the shortfall of employees to the
  front-line ranks, due to service retirements,
  medical retirements and job transfers to other
  agencies. Along with ending TDY's, these actions
  will also save overtime funds wasted by the
  current mismatch of management to line personnel
  and the additional expenditure of funds for daily
  per diem, travel, hotel and meals which cause an
  enormous dent in our national enforcement budget.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• Also, inaccurate systems and records must be
  resolved to prevent repeated and reoccurring
  inspections. For example, inaccurate information
  pertaining to, but not limited to lost
  immigration cards, overstays, stolen vehicles,
  individual record hits with non-extraditable
  status. Individuals who have a record that has
  not been corrected (despite its inaccuracies) are
  re-inspected everyday, plus every time they cross
  in one day. This causes border traffic to stop
  making already short inspection staff to inspect,
  detain and input repeated findings into the
  agency's record system.  These wasteful and
  repeated activities are duplicated over and over
  again, day after day, and add little to our
  homeland security interest.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• We recommend increasing inspection efficiency
  and accuracy by having current enforcement teams
  and personnel check persons and vehicles prior to
  arriving to the primary inspection area. This
  expedites the inspection time by the primary
  officer. The primary officer would only have to
  screen his name upon arrival.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• This recommendation can be easily accomplished
  with the current mobile and wireless
  communications equipment already stored and used
  at our ports of entry. To keep the front-line
  personnel where they are needed most - on the
  front line - we also recommend that management
  fence, identify and track by code all additional
  work and employees who work in areas of pubic
  traffic inspections.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• To maintain the focus of front-line personnel on
  the task of protecting the nation from terror and
  criminal elements, we suggest that COMPEX
  examinations should be stopped, on account of the
  time waste and ineffectiveness to examinations.
  The actionable findings created by COMPEX
  examination are less than one percent of the
  overall inspections.  This system sends random
  vehicles into secondary inspection without cause.
   For every 1,000 vehicles delayed without cause,
  one violation may occur -- if any.  Usually the
  traveler gets a verbal warning, often the same
  verbal warning the primary officer already
  delivered. This system causes unnecessary delays,
  causing unnecessary inspections, and manpower
  shortages for traffic facilitation.

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Texas Border CoalitionShort/Long and Midterm
Solutions

• Again, we believe the goals of assuring security
  and fostering trade are not mutually exclusive.
   Our nation's policies can and should be
  implemented to bolster both national security and
  economic trade without placing barriers
  detrimental to the flow of legitimate travelers
  and business arriving and departing between
  United Sates and Mexico.

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Brownsville Border Crossings 1999 - 2006
Source US Dept. of Transportation, Research and
Innovative Technology Administration, Bureau of
Transportation Statistics, Border Crossing /Entry
Data based on data from US Department of
Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection,
OMR Database
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McAllen Border Crossing 1999 - 2006
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Laredo Border Crossings 1999 - 2006
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Eagle Pass/Del Rio Border Crossings 1999 - 2006
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El Paso Border Crossings 1999 - 2006
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