On Thursday January 3rd, the House Homeland Security Committee held a field hearing in El Paso, Texas entitled, “Ensuring Homeland Security While Facilitating Legitimate Travel: The Challenge at America’s Ports of Entry.” In this meeting, members of the Department of Homeland Security, General Services Administration, Government Accountability Office and numerous private enterprises gathered to address the issue of growing wait-times at the nation’s ports of entry.
The issue of growing wait-times at ports of entry stands as a major policy priority for the BTA. Currently, there are 163 national ports of entry along the Northern and Southern borders encompassing more than 1,900 miles between the United States and Mexico and over 5,000 miles between the U.S. and Canada. Although reports show that federal funding has grown over the past few years to help with the increased flow of traffic in and out of the United States, there still exists the concern that the time it takes to cross the border is unacceptable.
Written testimony from the meeting demonstrated a variety of concerns, including the need for better technology, renovated entry ports and more border security. GSA Administrator Lurita Doan acknowledged these concerns and stated that the GSA’s main goal is to expand capacity of the Nation’s Land Ports of Entry and build new facilities where they are needed most, in a timely manner. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., also touched on these issues, but stated, “unfortunately we cannot fully address all of these issues overnight.” He went on to say that the larger challenge at this time is balancing the facilitation of legitimate travel with securing the border.
Last year, in response to reports from our constituents that CBP agents were checking and manually entering driver’s license information for a majority of citizens crossing at land ports of entry, the BTA launched a successful outreach and educational campaign to alert Members of Congress representing border communities regarding the impact of current policies on wait-times and numerous recommendations to improve the border-crossing experience for legitimate commerce and travel. While this meeting proves to a step in the right direction in alerting the federal government of this growing problem, this issue will continue to be a policy priority for the BTA and border communities.
Post written by:
Alison Barrett
BTA Intern
University of Southern CaliforniaInternational Relations ‘08
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