Commentary: Having an office in an industrial base five miles north of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, I am constantly asked, “How is Trump’s wall going to affect you?” I always answer that here in Santa Teresa, we already have a wall, really more like a fence, that stretches from east of El Paso to a point just west of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry. The fence itself has not impeded the area’s attractiveness for manufacturing operations and distribution warehouses. Nor has it had any discernable impact on cross-border trade flows between the U.S. and Mexico, because the lanes that allow private vehicle and commercial traffic to cross the border were pre-programmed into the fence when it was erected.
Last month, the federal government announced that it had awarded Barnard Construction of Montana a $73 million contract to build a 20-mile extension of the border fence, running from the Santa Teresa Port of Entry west into the desert. The company also will replace existing vehicle barriers in this section with taller, stronger barriers. The 20-mile extension was budgeted and approved during the Obama Administration, although the Trump Administration will probably take credit for seeing it through.
I believe that building a border-long fence is a waste of $25 billion that can be better utilized for other more pressing infrastructural needs throughout the country. A wall can be a deterrent, especially in urban areas and around international ports of entry. The high fence around the Santa Teresa Port of Entry was originally expanded and constructed to stop undocumented immigrants from mingling with the regular traffic flow, especially with the used vehicle export traffic, and sneaking into the U.S. Much of the wall construction occurred after the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
A fence in the immediate port vicinity also forces contraband runners in vehicles farther out into the desert where the sand can sometimes be four-feet deep. Even four-wheel drive vehicles can get stuck in sand this deep. Years ago, an associate of mine in a four-wheel drive Ford Expedition was showing prospective residential sites near the port to prospects, and left the graded road for a better look in the desert. He got high-centered and called me to go pull him out. I took a four-wheel drive Chevrolet truck, and we promptly got that stuck next to the Expedition. We then called a friend with a turbo-charged, four-wheel drive Dodge Durango for help, and we got that truck stuck. Desperate, we called the nearby sod farm, which sent a backhoe to extract all of us. On my honor as a gentleman, it also got stuck for several hours. The debacle started at 10:00 am and it took us until 7:00 pm to leave the desert. It makes a lot of sense to me that a fence can push illegal crossers into areas with natural barriers where they can be apprehended.
However, extensions of the wall can definitely affect the flow of commerce. Future expansions of a port of entry and increased development needs to be taken into consideration to avoid bottlenecks and costly modifications. The Santa Teresa Port of entry, originally opened in 1993, has now become the seventh most important commercial port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border. As New Mexico’s border region continues to industrialize and add population, the port will be in dire need of redesign and expansion. Also, the states of New Mexico and Chihuahua have conducted preliminary studies to relocate the international rail lines out of downtown El Paso/Juarez to a point just west of the Santa Teresa Port of Entry sometime in the future.
And simply cutting through the fence to expand an existing opening or to create a new one is not as easy or as cheap as it seems. Several years ago, there was a plan to enlarge a truck lane to accommodate the increasing overweight/oversize loads that were crossing at the Santa Teresa Port of Entry, which is the El Paso District’s designated port of entry for loads of this type. A project such as this takes a lot of paperwork and approval by various agencies, which can consume a lot of time; and the estimate to enlarge the lane came back at a whopping $2 million. Apparently, there is specific wiring and/or sensors embedded on the wall or beneath it that can increase the cost of modifying it immensely, not to mention the higher costs of government construction contracts.
So, will the wall affect our commerce at the border? If it adds increased security in and around the port of entry and affords existing companies and future investors more peace of mind that their cross-border shipments are safe, it will be positive. However, any new fence construction must be considered strategically. A $25 billion border-long fence, or “wall” as Trump likes to refer to it, would be a colossal waste of taxpayer money that can be used elsewhere. Additional sections of fence must be built where there are really needed, not as a reaction to a poorly thought-out campaign promise.
Finally, the federal government needs to work closely with border states, local governments, and developers to understand the scope of development and population growth that will occur in the future in order to minimize future bottlenecks and to limit the costs to take down sections of the fence in the future.
Jerry Pacheco is President of the Border Industrial Association. His columns appear in The Albuquerque Journal.