EXPEDITE THE BRIDGES

Border infrastructure overwhelmed, underfunded

The U.S. Customs Service's decision to temporarily add two inspectors at
each of the city's busiest bridges to ease traffic delays is good news. Of
course, it would be even better if bolstered staffing could be maintained
year-round.

Critics complained recently about delays lasting from one to two hours,
especially at the Bridge of the Americas, and pointed out that two or more
lanes had been closed during peak traffic hours. Indeed, that's frustrating
to daily commuters and harmful to binational trade in the El Paso-Juarez
area.

The bridge lanes are usually closed during drug searches or seizures.
Traffic in open lanes also is slowed when inspectors are diverted for drug
searches.

After complaints were reported during the past two weeks, Customs officials
added two inspectors per bridge (including the Paso del Norte bridge
Downtown and the Zaragoza bridge in Ysleta) per shift. That should help with
the bridge waits in December, but longer-term solutions to this increasing
problem are needed.

Customs and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, both of which
inspect at the bridges, are encouraged to allocate as many resources as
possible to reduce the length of bridge delays. Cars idling at the
international ports of entry are a major source of air pollution.

Long bridge delays are a year-round problem. It was suggested last week by
U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, that Customs hadn't hired about 125
inspectors that it was authorized to acquire. However, federal funding for
those positions, which was supposed to come from a federal drug-seizure
fund, didn't materialize to the extent expected, said Customs spokesman
Roger Maier.

The number of inspectors has been bolstered in El Paso and along the
Texas-Mexico border. El Paso has more inspectors, about 353, than ever (40
more than last year).

Balancing the need to expedite traffic across the international bridges in
the El Paso sector with Customs' and INS' separate-but-equal law-enforcement
priorities is an enormous challenge for the two agencies -- especially when
Congress does not prioritize border allocations and issues as it should.

On the one hand, there's a public and political mandate to more thoroughly
inspect vehicles to try to stem the tide of illicit drugs (especially heroin
and cocaine) entering the United States from Mexico. And on the other hand,
business groups on both sides of the border demand quicker passage because
it's conducive to business.

In December 1999, El Paso's Customs officers processed 1.3 million cars and
51,129 commercial trucks. Customs confiscated more than 34,000 pounds of
illegal drugs (400 seizures) during that month alone.

Bridge waits in El Paso could be reduced with construction of another
international port of entry -- something that U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes has
suggested. But that's a long-term solution, a 10-years-or-more ordeal of
wrangling through federal and local bureaucracy on both sides of the border
to get a new port of entry built.

What's needed in the meantime is more funding to add more inspectors and to
pay overtime for those who are pulling extra bridge duty, as will be done
this month. Congress and the federal government must acknowledge that border
infrastructure in El Paso is overwhelmed and underfunded, and resolve the
problems.