Long lines at the Texas border: Customs system issues on both sides of the US-Mexico border have caused cargo truck drivers to be delayed at the port of entry in El Paso, Texas.
Hundreds of commercial trucks have reported waiting in hours-long lines to cross the border from the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez via El Paso’s Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge in recent days.
“Over the last few days, intermittent computer issues affected US Customs and Border Protection,” CBP spokesman Roger Maier told FreightWaves. “We have resolved the issue on the US side, and all systems are now functioning as intended.”
On Wednesday, 5 April, CBP’s border wait times page showed trucks crossing the bridge from Mexico in 30 minutes or less. On Tuesday, truck crossings took more than an hour on average.
“We managed to keep wait times manageable despite system issues,” Maier said. “Trucks crossed the border and cleared our facilities quickly. Most of the time, we could see the end of the queue on the bridge.”
In 2022, over 650,000 cargo trucks crossed the Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge, facilitating more than $73 billion in trade between the U.S. and Mexico.
However, truckers faced significant delays, with wait times reaching up to eight hours on the Mexican side. Manuel Sotelo, president of Mexico’s National Chamber of Freight Transport in Juarez, attributed the delays to a transition in customs control from the Mexican Tax Administration Service to the military. He also warned of additional delays due to the Good Friday closure of Mexican federal offices, which would pause imports and exports.
