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A truck set on fire by suspected gang members burns near trailers queuing to cross the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge on Wednesday. STRINGER (REUTERS)
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has loosened the additional inspections he launched last week at the border with Mexico that sparked chaos at four international bridges.
Faced with pressure from the neighboring country, the US politician opted on Thursday night to relax the truck and bus inspection operations at the crossings with the states of Chihuahua and Coahuila.
On Wednesday he had already opened hands with Nuevo León after meeting with his counterpart Samuel García.
However, the most worrying situation is in Tamaulipas, where an agreement has not yet been announced.
Amid the tension and protests of the transporters, several trailers burned in Reynosa, presumably at the hands of organized crime.
The governor of Chihuahua, Maru Campos, signed a memorandum of understanding with Abbott, a Republican admirer of Donald Trump, “to facilitate the crossing of cargo vehicles across the border.”
The government of the northern state indicated that several issues were addressed "to guarantee the security of both nations."
There was also a meeting with Miguel Riquelme, Governor of Coahuila.
"We signed a bilateral agreement on security and migration," he reported, assuring that "as of this moment, the exhaustive reviews that the Government of Texas was carrying out on all cargo vehicles are lifted, which will make binational trade more agile. ”.
Just on Thursday, Mexico had stepped up pressure on Abbott to stop additional inspection measures.
The Senate sent a letter to the governor of the border state calling on him to restore regular surveillance.
The statement of the Political Coordination Board of the Upper House, also sent to Vice President Kamala Harris and the leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties in the US Senate, lamented that "the relief of just one of the affected bridges does not represent a sufficient solution to the current problem”.
The concern of the legislators has to do essentially with the economic impact of the crisis.
“The border between Mexico and the United States is the busiest territory in the world [...].
In the particular case of the state of Texas, the commercial flow represents around 442,000 million dollars and we have 1,900 kilometers of border with 28 international crossings,” the letter reads.
The Confederation of Industrial Chambers of the United Mexican States (Concamin) also anticipated a fateful outlook with the calculation of losses of up to eight million dollars a day.
And to give an idea of the dimension of the monumental traffic jam caused by the governor of Texas, one piece of information: the bridge between Reynosa and the Texas city of Pharr alone regularly carries some 3,000 trucks every day.
The conflict has a political origin that is not related to the bilateral agenda of both countries.
It is rather a political dispute between a Republican politician who is running for re-election in the November elections and the Democratic administration of Joe Biden.
Abbott's hard hand on migration refers to Trump's mandate and it is precisely the debate on the elimination of a former president's immigration measure that provoked a reaction from the Austin government.
The White House plans to lift the so-called Title 42 at the end of May, a health regulation adopted under the pretext of the covid-19 pandemic that allows immigrants to be easily deported.
“As long as the federal government continues to ignore the crisis at the border, the state will remain steadfast in its efforts to fill those gaps and keep Texas safe,” the governor launched,
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