By Julia Preston
EL PASO, Texas - U.S. border agents have stepped up scrutiny of Americans returning home from Mexico, slowing commerce and creating delays at border crossings.
It is part of a dress rehearsal for new rules, to take effect in January, that will require Americans to show a passport or other proof of citizenship to enter the United States. The requirements were approved by Congress as part of anti-terrorism legislation in 2004.
Border officials said agents along the southern border were asking more returning U.S. citizens to show a photo identity document. Agents are also increasing the frequency of queries in which they check a traveler’s information against law enforcement, immigration and anti-terror databases.
The new policy is a big shift after decades when Americans arrived at land border crossings, declared they were citizens and were waved on through. Since enforcement was intensified in August, wait times at border stations in Texas have often stretched to two hours or more, discouraging visitors and shoppers and upsetting local business.
The delays could remain a fact of life across the southern border for the next few years, border officials said, at least until new security technology and expanded entry stations are installed and until Americans get used to being checked and questioned like foreigners.
W. Ralph Basham, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, the agency that manages the borders, said longer waits had resulted from added security measures at border stations that in many cases were aging, outmoded and facing surging traffic.
The longer lines along the Mexico border have been especially unsettling here in El Paso, a border city long comfortable in its marriage to Ciudad Juarez, the Mexican metropolis on the other bank of the Rio Grande. Lines of cars and pedestrians at sunrise on the four border bridges here are a routine for tens of thousands of people, including many U.S. citizens, coming from Mexico on their way to school, work and shopping.
Border trade groups say the long lines are disrupting economic ties vital to both sides of the border.
“We are Americans who live at the border, with our economy and livelihood that depend on moving efficiently back and forth,” said Maria Luisa O’Connell, president of the Border Trade Alliance, which represents businesses all along the border. “Now suddenly we have measures that make it less efficient but don’t make us any safer.”
Copyright 2007 Chicago Tribune