Mexico shuts down Nogales border crossing indefinitely, limits cargo processing
Mexico shuts down Nogales border crossing indefinitely, limits cargo processing
Rafael Carranza and Rafael Carranza, El Paso Times
Published 2:33 p.m. MT March 31, 2020
TUCSON — The Mexican customs agency announced on Monday that it will shut down operations indefinitely at the pedestrian-only crossing in Nogales and limit service at the commercial truck crossing at the Arizona's busiest gateway to Mexico.
The moves strike another blow to local cross-border commerce over concerns about the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Restrictions implemented in the past month already have led to dozens of layoffs from U.S. businesses dependent on shoppers from Mexico.
A travel ban on nonessential travel along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as new measures calling for people to stay at home, have greatly reduced cross-border traffic. Many businesses have closed their doors.
On Monday, senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Arizona said that their counterparts in Mexico, the Servicio de Administración Tributaria, or SAT, had notified them that they would be closing indefinitely the Morley pedestrian crossing, along Nogales' historic downtown.
The closure follows a decision by SAT last week to shut down operations on Sundays for the cargo processing facility at the Mariposa port of entry.
Those restrictions likely will impact the more than 2,000 trucks that cross the border through Nogales daily, carrying mostly fresh fruits and produce bound for overwhelmed supermarkets around the United States.
Nogales Mayor Arturo Gariño said the full impact on the city is unknown. He issued an emergency declaration March 21 that will allow Nogales to tap into federal or state funds to help the city cope with an expected downfall in sales-tax revenue, one of the primary sources of income for city coffers to keep services going.
The city is still crunching numbers to assess the potential impact and determine how much money they'll need to make up for expected losses from COVID-19 and the restrictions at the border for an undermined period of time.
"It's pretty unique here. It's different than Tucson trying to recover from the virus," Gariño said.
"We're going to have to recover from the virus, from the border closure, and then what Nogales, Sonora, and what the government is doing over there."
Morley pedestrian crossing
The decision to shut down the Morley pedestrian crossing capped several weeks of uncertainty for U.S. businesses in downtown Nogales. The business owners had been struggling in the past few weeks to attract customers into their stores.
The stores that remained open had reduced their hours and their employees wore face masks and gloves.
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After Arizona and the city called for stricter measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, nearly all stores closed their doors and laid off dozens of their employees who live and worked on both sides of the border.
"It's just a sign of the times with this health emergency that we're all facing. They're also facing it in Mexico," Bruce Bracker said.
He's a Santa Cruz County supervisor and his family owned a department store for decades along Morley Avenue before a decrease in foot traffic and shoppers from Mexico forced them to close it in 2017.
Nogales will still have two other pedestrian crossings open, the main one at the Dennis DeConcini port of entry down the block from Morley plus the Mariposa border crossing on the city's west side.
CBP officials in Arizona said that crossings decreased almost by half after the series of travel restrictions on "non-essential" travel went into effect on March 21. The agency said in a written statement that "port management is constantly evaluating their operations and staffing resources are assigned, as needed."
SAT, the Mexican customs agency, has not given a reason for shutting down operations at the Morley crossing. Calls to the agency on Monday afternoon went unanswered.
There has been ongoing construction by the gate for several months. Access to the crossing also had become increasingly restricted after migrants late last year tried rushing the port, triggering lane closures and an increased police presence on the Mexican side.
Officials in Mexico also installed a metal gate to block pedestrian traffic near the processing lanes at the border.
"(Mexican) customs is probably looking at their staffing issues and saying these are the things that we can do and the things that we can't do," Bracker said.
Mariposa cargo processing restrictions
The decision to restrict cargo processing likely will have wider implications for Nogales and beyond.
The city is the main gateway for fresh winter produce and fruits grown in Mexico and imported to supermarkets in the U.S. and Canada.
In 2019, more than $3.2 billion's worth of fruit and produce passed through the Mariposa border crossing.
SAT and CBP will shut down cargo processing for the next three Sundays in April, with the potential for more Sunday closures.
That could threaten to disrupt the progress that Nogales stakeholders have accomplished in recent years to facilitate cross-border commerce in the region and to reduce wait times for commercial traffic.
That would put Nogales at a disadvantage, according to Guillermo Valencia, the president of the Nogales Customs Brokers Association.
"If there's customers that want to go and cross their merchandise, they can go to California or to Texas, and that's obviously taking customers away from us," he said. "The other thing it does is that if customers can't cross through here on Sundays, they could lose their competitive advantage to getting products to markets."
Valencia said there could be further disruptions as the governments of the two countries continue responding to the COVID-19 pandemic inside their borders.
But all stakeholders echoed calls to reopen the Morley crossing and to fully restore cargo processing at the Mariposa port of entry as soon as public health officials conclude that the restrictions are no longer necessary.
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/ne...us/5098435002/
