Lance Jungmeyer, FPAA president and current chairman of the Border Trade Alliance (BTA), and Britton Mullen, president of the BTA, sent a joint letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott raising concerns about the enhanced inspections being conducted by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) currently happening at the Brownsville, TX Veterans Bridge (Los Tomates) and at Los Indios in Donna, TX. The letter states:
“The Border Trade Alliance writes to you for the third time in 13 months to register our strong opposition to the Texas Department of Public Safety’s duplicative and costly inspections of commercial vehicles entering Texas from Mexico. As we wrote to you in April 2022 and December 2022, this inspection scheme leads to severe backups and congestion around ports of entry and in border communities, and it harms already strained supply chains.
We do not disagree that Texas has an important role to play at its border with Mexico, including ensuring truck safety and code compliance, for example. But your administration is engaged in a new inspection model that is dramatically slowing the movement of freight and putting upward pressure on consumer prices amid already high inflation.”
