Washington, D.C. (May 3, 2023) – The Center for Immigration Studies has confirmed that in a reprise of a controversial but successful diplomatic pressure tactic against Mexico from last year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered meticulous truck safety inspections once again that have shuttered a major commercial trucking artery from Mexico.

This comes as illegal border crossings have spiked in anticipation of the end of Title 42 expulsions on May 11. The bridge slowdown is “only a break-glass solution for when things get really bad,” one senior Abbott official told CIS.

The deployment of Texas Department of Public Safety vehicle safety inspection officers Tuesday has all but closed the trucking lanes at Veterans International Bridge from Matamoros into Brownsville.

“We’re doing 100 percent inspections, which means every truck will be inspected,” Texas DPS spokesman Chris Olivarez confirmed to CIS Wednesday.

“It’s indefinite,” Olivarez said. “We want to make sure the trucks are safe and they’re following state and federal regulations to make sure they are operating safety on Texas roadways.”

This week’s resurrection of the inspections regimen comes as Mexican authorities across in the state of Tamaulipas last week began to allow tens of thousands of immigrants to cross the Rio Grande from Matamoros – enticed by the Biden-Harris administration’s continuing mass releases of border crossers into the American interior. The Biden government and many experts expect the surge to worsen in the coming days, ahead of the May 11 demise of the federal Title 42 rapid expulsion policy.

Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow, writes, “While the state police agency may publicly insist these inspections are for public safety purposes, circumstances more persuasively suggest the Texas governor once again hopes to use this hard-nosed trade disruption tactic to economically pressure his Mexican counterparts into slowing a powerful, gathering surge of illegal immigrant crossings that is now underway from Matamoros into Brownsville, and also from Juarez into El Paso, at the other end of the Texas-Mexico border.”

One year ago, Abbott’s truck inspections tactic brought four Mexican governors to the bargaining table to sign agreements that their state police agencies would stop a 15,000-immigrant caravan on its way to the border and to then work more generally with Texas to slow illegal immigration on the Mexican side.
The bridge from Matamoros is the only one “as of right now,” Olivarez said.