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AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott will restart the inspections of commercial trucks after they have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border into Texas in an effort to prevent human smuggling following Monday’s tragedy in San Antonio.
“Today, I’m announcing Texas is going to add additional truck checkpoints,” Abbott, who is seeking a third term in November, said during a press conference in the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, on Wednesday afternoon. “[The Department of Public Safety] will create and implement the checkpoint strategy beginning immediately, where they will begin targeting trucks like the [one] that was used.”
Abbott announced the truck inspections on April 6, days after the Biden administration said it would stop immediately expelling illegal immigrants who came across the southern border, a policy enacted when the coronavirus pandemic began two years ago. The inspections were meant to detect people or drugs being smuggled into the United States, though they duplicated federal inspections.
He did not disclose how widely the truck inspections will be, given the state’s expansive 1,200-mile border with Mexico.
State troopers were tasked with conducting safety checks on all trucks arriving in roughly two dozen locations up and down the state’s border. Abbott said at the time that 25% of trucks were found to be in violation of U.S. safety laws, though those were not federal smuggling laws.
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The inspections had a significant impact on port-of-entry operations, preventing thousands of trucks from entering the U.S. Delays topped 10 hours as trucks were rerouted to other ports of entry, some hundreds of miles west, prompting criticism from lawmakers, including Republicans.
Abbott held to the inspections along the border, only rescinding them following a deal with the governor of the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon. Within days, the governors from Coahuila and Chihuahua also signed agreements with Texas, vowing to secure the Mexican side of the border to prevent illegal immigration into the U.S. and the transportation of people and goods in vehicles. Tamaulipas was the fourth and final state to agree to Abbott’s terms, prompting the end of the inspections in late April.
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Despite the heightened security on Mexico’s side of the border, the number of migrants apprehended after illegally crossing into the U.S. remains at an all-time high in Texas.
