A new reportfrom the Government Accountability Office looks at border wait times and finds Customs and Border Patrol are not doing a good job on estimating wait times and on allocating staff to deal with cross-border traffic.
Why is this important? Tradewith Mexico is booming and a huge part of that trade is cross-border truck traffic.
In a letter to Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security, the GAO outlined what is at stake with border trade:
Trade with Mexico, the nation’s third-largest trade partner behind Canada and China, is important to the United States’ economic health, and timely access to Mexican goods is important to both U.S. manufacturers and consumers. The value of goods imported into the United States from Mexico has increased over 30 percent in the last 5 years, and in 2012 imports from Mexico were valued at nearly $278 billion. Most of this trade crosses the border by commercial truck, and in 2012 there were over 5 million truck crossings into the United States from Mexico.
This is an issue that has come to the fore in recent months with talks about hardening border securityand investing millions into new fences and new technology to keep undocumented migrants and drug smugglers out of the U.S. A pushback from border business interests and politiciansstresses the need to facilitate trade and traffic to support economic integration and development in the border region.
In its report, GAO inspectors wanted to answer the following questions:
• To what extent are CBP wait time data reliable for public reporting and informing CBP decisions on staffing and infrastructure investments?
• To what extent has CBP identified infrastructure and staffing needed to process current commercial traffic volume at select southwest border crossings with high traffic volume?
• To what extent do CBP performance measures assess progress toward its goal of facilitating trade?
To answer those questions, GAO auditors visited the following six border crossings: Bridge of the Americas and Ysleta in El Paso, Texas; World Trade Bridge and Columbia Solidarity Bridge in Laredo, Texas; Mariposa in Nogales, Ariz.; and Otay Mesa near San Diego. According to the report, these six crossings account for 70 percent of commercial vehicle crossings from into the U.S. from fiscal year 2008 until July of 2012.
One key finding from the report is that the CBP methods for estimating wait times — an estimate that has a direct impact on border business profits — are unreliable and incomplete.
For example, five of the six crossings GAO visited require observation of the end of the queue to estimate wait times, but officials at these crossings reported the lines extended beyond their view at times.
Wait time estimates not only impact trade, but are also used to inform CBP management decisions and staffing along the border. Without an accurate sense of how long it takes to get from, say, Juarez to El Paso, trucking companies cannot efficiently plan for transport and CBP cannot efficiently staff busy ports of entry. The report says the unreliability of CBP data means it is of limited use to the private sector.
None of the industry stakeholders representing 21 companies and associations we met with over the course of our study reported using CBP’s wait time data because they questioned the accuracy of the data.
The CBP itself has identified ways to improve data collection with automated technology and several pilot projects are underway in Texas with a project to use traceable microchips to track vehicle wait times and post those wait times online. But the CBP has not worked out a plan to put these automated procedures in place up and down the border.
The GAO report also concludes that the CBP staffing allocation process “lacks transparency.” In other words, the CBP doesn’t have the data to back up how they staff the ports of entry. Obviously, if wait times are inordinately high in a given crossing, then more staff is needed to speed traffic along. But if CBP estimates of wait times are unreliable, then how can their staffing allocation justifications be reliable? CBP told the GAO that they needed nearly 4,000 new officers to improve wait times, but three of six ports of entry visited by GAO inspectors said they had sufficient staff.
CBP human capital officials reported that they adjust staff allocations across locations to better ensure that staff levels match areas of greatest need, but CBP has not documented this process, and there is no guidance defining the methodology used or factors considered when allocating staff across ports.
The GAO report is reminiscent of another report documenting how the Border Patrol has failed to come up with milestones and timeframes to develop border security goals and effective measurements of progress.
At a time when the Congress is discussing spending billions more on upgrading border security, it is a good thing that a “government accountability” office is continuing to reveal a lack of effective planning for those dollars.