Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, announced June 21 that he would send another 1,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to aid the federal government with border security efforts.
Abbott said the additional troops would serve a “short-term mission” assisting U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents at new migrant facilities in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso that will be opened in the coming weeks.
The troops will also help Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents at commercial ports of entry along the border in El Paso, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley.
“This is necessary because more than 45,000 people have been apprehended crossing our border in just the last three weeks,” Abbott said. “This is necessary because Congress is failing to do its job funding border security.”
The extra troops bring the total serving on the Texas border to more than 2,000. There are also 1,400 active-duty soldiers who remain on the border, according to a U.S. Army spokesman. Abbott added the federal government will pay 100 percent of the cost for the additional troops at the border.
Wait times in the commercial lanes at the International Trade Bridge in Port Laredo on Monday averaged from 15 minutes to 27 minutes. At the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge near the border city of McAllen, Texas, wait times were 11 to 26 minutes in the commercial lanes.
In El Paso, the commercial lanes at the Bridge of the Americas and the Ysleta–Zaragoza International Bridge had wait times ranging from 10 to 20 minutes Monday morning.
Several weeks ago, border commercial crossing wait times exploded prior to President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement with Mexico. According to FreightWaves Wait Time Index, which measures the average amount of time a truck spends parked at a facility in minutes excluding drop trailers, drivers were spending more than an hour or more on average in El Paso and Laredo, Texas in May compared to 2018.
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