PRESIDIO, Texas (CN) — Elsa Armendariz and her husband Alberto run Montana Western Wear, a clothing store in the quiet West Texas border town of Presidio. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, customers would come from as far away as the Mexican states of Coahuila and Durango to browse their selection of boots, hats and more. At Christmas, they’d pick up gifts for friends and family.
Occasionally, American tourists stop by on their way to the Rio Grande and other attractions. “They buy some things,” Elsa said, “but not as much.” Her main customer base comes from Ojinaga, a city just across the U.S.-Mexico border with around seven times the population of Presidio.
“Presidio is a border city,” Elsa said in a phone interview. “It would be a lot better if people from Mexico could cross.”
A group of officials and trade organizations along the border are calling on the federal government to end travel restrictions for Mexican visa holders, rules first adopted at the start of the coronavirus crisis. The coalition says the United States is winning the war against Covid-19 and that “the time has come” to reopen land ports in American border cities, where many residents have family and economic ties to Mexico.
In a letter last week to Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, around 30 signatories complained that “the ‘temporary’ limits” on cross-border travel “have now lasted for more than 14 months.” With a cross-border economy worth around $19 billion, they warned that the rules have “heavily paralyzed and devastated” communities along the southern border, where businesses depend on “the influx of daily travelers.”
The letter stresses that asylum seekers are being allowed to cross and that “common-sense measures,” including negative Covid-19 tests and proof of vaccination, can keep residents and port officials safe while allowing border life to return to normal.
“We look forward to a positive response on this matter,” the letter concludes, “which has a severe economic impact on many communities in the U.S.-Mexico border region.”
The travel restrictions at U.S. land ports date back to the start of the pandemic. In March 2020, the U.S., Mexico and Canada all agreed to limit nonessential border traffic in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus.
More than a year later, the U.S. and other vaccine-rich countries have started to emerge from the pandemic, but U.S. land ports remain closed — at least in theory. Residents in southern border towns say ports into Mexico have remained largely open even at the heights of the pandemic. But entering the U.S. from Mexico is a different story.
On the northern border, where communities are also fretting about economic impacts, Canada has renewed its port closures for nonessential U.S. visitors through at least late June. This week, U.S. officials also extended restrictions for Mexican travelers.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for policing U.S. borders, did not respond to a request for comment by press time, including to confirm whether they had received the recent letter.
Allowances for commercial and essential traffic mean that some types of visitors — including truck drivers and people with medical needs — are still making it across the southern border into the U.S. But crossing numbers have nonetheless fallen sharply, government figures show.
At the San Ysidro port in San Diego/Tijuana — the busiest southern land port — entry crossings fell from around 15 million people to under 12 million, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Transportation. In Brownsville on the other side of the border, they fell from just under 5 million to around 3 million.