Texas Holds Up Truck Traffic to Change Mexico’s Migration Politics

Trucks line up before heading to the United States at the Otay commercial port of entry on
GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP via Getty Images
Neil Munro

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) is choking truck traffic across the U.S.-Mexico border to get Mexico’s government to help block the migrant flood invited by President Joe Biden’s border chief, says Todd Bensman, a Texas-based expert at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“If Texas wants to back those trucks up severely, they can do it as much as they want,” Bensman told Breitbart News.

The point is to get governors and mayors in northern Mexico where the maquiladoras [oursourced U .S outsourcing factories] are, to start complaining to [Mexican President Andrés Manuel López] Obrador, and Obrador is then going to complain to the American ambassador. Then it’s going to go to the State Department, and then Biden is going to have to do something.

Bensman posted a video of the resulting cross-border traffic jams on Friday afternoon:

“The Biden Administration’s open-border policies have paved the way for dangerous cartels and deadly drugs to pour into the United States, and this crisis will only be made worse by ending Title 42 expulsions,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at an April 6 press event. He added:

With the end of Title 42 expulsions looming next month, Texas will immediately begin taking unprecedented action to do what no state has done in American history to secure our border. The new strategies announced today and next week will further strengthen our already robust response to the Biden border disaster, and we will use any and all lawful powers to curtail the flow of drugs, human traffickers, illegal immigrants, weapons, and other contraband into Texas.

Abbot signed the safety directive on April 6, telling the Texas Department of Public Safety:

As you have explained, the cartels that smuggle illicit contraband and people across our southern border do not care about the condition of the vehicles they send into Texas any more than they care who overdoses from the deadly fentanyl on board. In response to this threat, which is projected to grow in the coming months, I hereby direct the Department of Public Safety (DPS) to conduct enhanced safety inspections of vehicles as they cross international ports of entry into Texas. These inspections should begin immediately to help ensure that Texans are not endangered by unsafe vehicles and their unsafe drivers.

Cross-border traffic is falling fast. Frieghtwaves.com reported Friday:

At the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, 2,516 commercial trucks crossed on Thursday, a 35% decline compared to the same day last week before Abbott’s measures were announced, according to CBP data.

Commercial truck traffic at Laredo’s Colombia-Solidarity Bridge was 2,233 on Thursday, an 11% decline compared to last Thursday.

Texas’ decision to carefully check the cross-border trucks for drugs will quickly get the angry attention of powerful U.S. business groups, said Bensman. Those groups have outsourced their supply of critical food and manufacturing components to Mexican farms and factories, known as maquiladoras.

Trucks can bypass the traffic jams on the Texas border, but only by taking a 1,250-mile detour through Mexico to reach the entry at Nogales, Arizona.

“That’s one of the things McAllen is concerned about,” Javier Villalobos, that border city’s Republican mayor, told the Democrat-leaning TexasTribune.org news site. “If it affects negatively, we’re going to be in the governor’s ear daily.”

When Biden’s deputies complain, “what Texas is going to do is first say ‘What are you talking about? We’re just keeping our roads safe. We don’t know anything about Mexico,'” Bensman said.

But Texas officials also will have a strong message for Biden’s government, he added: “We do know that you need to tell the Mexicans to shut this [migration] down. Close this off, ship the migrants out, block the crossing point… We want you to be like President Donald Trump.”

Biden’s people — especially his pro-migration border chief Alejandro Mayorkas — do not want to stop the growing migration through Mexico, Bensman said:

They’re not going to do Trump, they’re not going to channel Trump. They’re going to do what they always do — they’re going to file a lawsuit against Texas, and they’re going to allege that Texas is blocking international trade. And they’re going to name a whole bunch of national security reasons for this.

Texas is going to deny it. They’re gonna say “No, we’re not. We’re just doing what we’ve always done, just you know, a little bit differently. We have a right to check trucks. That’s all we’re doing.”

It’ll be up to a judge. It’ll probably be filed in the Ninth Circuit [in California]. And those left-wingers over there in the Ninth Circuit are going to issue an injunction [against Texas] and then we’ll go [to other courts] from there.

This is a high-stakes hardball version of the “Texas Hold’em,” card game, Bensman said.

In 2019, in his third year in office, Trump ignored his pro-business advisors and got serious about the migration problems that he was elected to solve. “Here’s the way this worked when Trump was in office,” said Bensman:

Trump said [Mexico in 2019], ‘I’m implementing the first 5 percent trade tariff … [and] If I don’t see you get getting rid of the migrants, within a month, it goes to 10 percent and then if you still haven’t done it, it goes to 15 percent and it goes all the way up to 28 percent.”

He was willing to do a 28 percent tariff on all Mexican goods — but he never had to even get to 5 percent because the [Mexican] mayors and governors of those [northern Mexican] states rely on those [outsourcing] businesses which also are powerful and have influence. So they all went to President Obrador and said, “Guys, we’ve got to comply [with Trump],” and he did.

“I don’t think this will be any different,” said Bensman. “If Texas wants to back those trucks up severely, they can do it as much as they want.”

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.