Trade across the U.S.-Mexico border is being severely hampered due to an ongoing migrant crisis that is threatening businesses’ supply chains, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The southern border is facing a massive influx of migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally, with the U.S. Border Patrol reporting that a record high of 22,000 illegal migrants were being held in custody on Tuesday as opposed to just 7,696 on June 8. Trade that U.S. companies rely on for their supply chains is being hampered due to delays at points of entry that are being shut down by Border Patro to address the surge, according to the WSJ. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Migrants Are Ditching Biden DHS’ Legal Entry Phone App, Crossing Border Illegally Instead)
“It is a big challenge right now,” Niels Larsen, North America president of air and sea operations for freight forwarder DSV, told the WSJ. “We are doing our best to serve our clients, but we also understand that human lives are at risk here.”
Just in the past week, Mexican railroad company Ferromex suspended some of its operations across the border, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporarily shut down rail and truck crossings at El Paso and Eagle Pass, Texas, according to the WSJ. Ferromex also shut down operations earlier this month after thousands of migrants boarded the tops of trains going across the border, leading to a number of injuries and deaths.
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Customs has also previously closed ports of entry so that it could divert staff to process the surge of migrants, leading BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad to hold their freight while the ports were closed, according to the WSJ.
The uptick in incidents at the border is discouraging companies that were previously looking to move their Asian operations closer to the U.S. to shorten the shipping distance and avoid bottlenecks and uncertainty.
“We have dealt with long lines and we have dealt with severe delays, but it’s few and far between where [customs] are actually shutting a port down,” Mike Burkhart, vice president of U.S. freight broker C.H. Robinson Worldwide, told the WSJ, noting that the recent disruptions are the worst he has ever seen.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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