April 4, 2019 • Local News
Possibility of Trump closing Mexican border has El Paso businesses, residents concerned
Possibility of Trump closing Mexican border has El Paso businesses, residents concerned
If the U.S.-Mexico border closes, as President Donald Trump has threatened, it would be less than a week before American manufacturers had to start laying off employees, says the head of an El Paso-based cross-border transportation and logistics company.
“In 24 hours, the auto assembly plants in the U.S. would start shutting down because the most important part of a car, when you’re building a car, is the parts that you don’t have,” said Alan Russell, CEO of Tecma, which provides support to more than 80 companies with U.S.-Mexico operations and employs more than 8,500 people across both countries. “If you don’t have a door lock or a steering wheel or an electric fuel pump, a wiring harness, you cannot build the car.”
Jerry Pacheco, CEO of the Border Industrial Association, a New Mexico nonprofit group that works to support international trade, said a border closure would affect much more than car manufacturers — consumer electronics, medical devices and agricultural products all travel to the United States through the international port of entry in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and would be trapped in Mexico if the border closed.
The Santa Teresa port is home to 60 businesses across four industrial parks. About 6,000 people work there and handle about $2 billion in imports from Mexico each year, he said.
If the border were to close, businesses and their employees thousands of miles away would be affected. As the supply chain ground to a halt, and manufacturing stopped, layoffs would start to affect warehouse employees about the same time employees at warehouses were being let go.
"I have a steel company in Santa Teresa that estimated that for every job they have in Santa Teresa, three jobs are supported in the Midwest," he said. "One in logistics, one in manufacturing and one in, like, quality control. So it's not just disruptive to us at the border."
Nearby El Paso, Texas, recorded more than $81 billion in trade passing through its three ports of entry in 2018, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas on El Paso. A report published by Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts for 2015 estimated that trade at El Paso's ports of entry added 128,500 jobs to the state and at least $18.4 billion to the Texas economy.
Border closure effect on El Pasoans
Crossings are not limited to trade, though. The Texas comptroller's report estimated 18,000 pedestrians cross the border between El Paso and Juarez every day — to go to work, to school or to shop. That's more people crossing than anywhere else in the state.
Carina Hernandez, a social worker who commutes from Juarez for her job in the Socorro Independent School District across the border in El Paso, said Trump can't understand what it means to close the border.
"He's focusing on one side, and I think he needs to step back and see what it's like to live in a border city," she said.
Crossing, she added, is "just a way of life for many people."
Her children attend school in El Paso, and they often visit their grandparents, who live in El Paso.
"My children ask me what we would do, if we would have to stop visiting my parents because we would have to choose and be separated," she said. The threat of waking up to a closed border "does worry me," Hernandez said.
The University of Texas at El Paso estimates about 5 percent of its student population is from Mexico. That's about 1,100 students, and while they don't all commute across the border every day, the Student Government Association president estimates nearly 1,000 students could be directly affected with blocked commutes or lack of housing if the border closes.
“There is a sense of anxiety among students with the uncertainty of the situation,” SGA President Cristian Botello said. “There is a lot talk about it on campus and on social media. Even students who are not international students are worried and aware of the possibility. Right now there is some anxiety from both students that cross the border everyday and those who don’t. It is going to be a very difficult challenge for all students.”
UTEP has created a task force to handle any needs that might arise among students, faculty or staff if the border is closed, and it has launched a website to provide updated information on the status of the ports of entry.
So far, the task force has focused on finding temporary housing for students who cross the border every day and letting students continue coursework online if they are unable to attend classes.
“Right now, we are evaluating the situation to determine what needs to be offered, depending on what each individual’s needs when they come forward,” said Sandy Vasquez, UTEP's associate vice president for human resources and one of the chairs of the task force. “This could include faculty needing to teach online to conduct the class if students are not able to cross the border. Also, providing temporary housing on-campus.”
Housing would include dorm rooms on campus, Vasquez said.
The largest public school system in El Paso, the El Paso Independent School District, are also focused on housing if the border closes.
“We do have a plan in which there are circumstances where students who may live here and go across the border for various reasons,” EPISD spokeswoman Melissa Martinez said. “We also have faculty that go across the border, so we do have an emergency plan in place for any emergency situation in which we have to house or shelter students.”
Trump changing his mind?
The president on Tuesday appeared to scale back his remarks on closing the border, noting that Mexico had apprehended a large number of migrants at its southern border.
But closing the border would punish the United States at least as much as it hurts Mexico, economists say.
"If there is disruption, it ends up reducing profitability and harming the efficiency of North American manufacturing in general," said Tom Fullerton, a UTEP economics professor and the chair of the Study of Trade in the Americas. "Closing the border would be harmful to the region but also the U.S. manufacturing sector."
Mexico is the United States' third largest trading partner, with more than $611 billion in products and services crossing the border last year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
Even a short closure of 24 or 48 hours "would be complete chaos," said Russell, of the international logistics company Tecma.
Even the dinner plate could be affected
At this time of year, Mexico provides almost all of the avocados in the United States, Steve Barnard, president and chief executive of Mission Produce, told Reuters.
Mexico accounts for almost 80 percent of the total avocado business in the U.S., according to the Avocados from Mexico website. And according to the website, Mexican avocados are the only ones available 365 days a year.
Jame Mata, president of Mata's Produce Inc. in El Paso, said avocado is a popular commodity in the Sun City.
"We sell a lot of avocado," he said. "Right now we are ordering about 80 to 100 cases of avocados a week."
Each case has 84 avocados, so his store is moving 6,800 avocados per week.
"I have no idea what people would use if if they couldn't put avocado in their shrimp cocktails or guacamole," he said.
Mexican restaurants in El Paso and elsewhere would especially struggle without the widely used ingredient and garnish.
Maria Tarango, manager of Flautas Y Paleteria Tepalca in West El Paso, didn't even want to consider running out of avocados.
"It's a necessity here," she said. "We use it in the flautas, in the tortas and quesadillas, and of course in the guacamole, when we serve salsas on the tables.
"We order about 50 boxes of avocados per week on the low end," she said. "And each box has about 38 to 42 avocados. The effect would be drastic."
El Paso even has a restaurant named after the fruit — The Avocado Cafe, near Interstate 10.
Owner Greg Pugh puts a full avocado on the side of every sandwich, and he recently invented a new smoothie made of avocado, almond milk and coconut.
"People have been talking about it all morning," Pugh said Monday of the possible avocado crisis, adding that the news stories might have given people even more of a hankering for his sandwiches. He only had one avocado left before closing time at 4 p.m.
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