The U.S.-Mexico Border Becomes More High-Tech

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

CHAPTERS 

[00:00:00]: What ports of entry do and why they are far more complex than they appear 

[00:03:57]: What CBP is looking for when it stops vehicles and pedestrians at the border 

[00:08:50]: How new scanning technology can inspect an entire cargo truck in seconds 

[00:12:19]: How ports of entry became central to immigration processing—and the strain that creates 

[00:22:03]: Why scaling up port capacity is harder than it looks: space, geography, and manpower 

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:03.07] 

Welcome to the World of Migration, a Migration Policy Institute podcast that's dedicated to discussing many different facets of international migration. Each episode we sit down with an interesting thinker, provocative thinker or two on migration, and go beyond the headlines on a particular trend, policy development or other change that we think is interesting. And we hope you do too. My name is Andrew Selee. I'm the President of the Migration Policy Institute, often known as MPI, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with two MPI colleagues who have traveled the length of the U.S.-Mexico border from San Diego, California to Brownsville, Texas, to try and understand more about operations and policies that facilitate the movement of goods and people across the border. There's another podcast you can hear with them talking about immigration policies at the border. They looked at that as well. But in this one we're going to be really focused on the ports of entry themselves and particularly the way those are evolving to allow people and goods to move across in efficient ways. Our Policy Analyst, Ariel Ruiz Soto and Research Assistant Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh recently came back from the tour of the 2,000 mile border where they visited border crossing points all across different states.

[00:01:10.02] 

What we normally know as ports of entry, the U.S.-Mexico border is one of the busiest in the world, with hundreds of thousands of vehicles and pedestrians and billions of dollars in trade crossing legally through ports of entry each day. The ports of entry also receives some of the asylum seekers and other migrants who are attempting to enter the United States. And it's the policies, procedures and operations around this latter population arriving would be migrants that Ariel and Colleen were particularly focused on examining. But they also took a pretty hard look at some of the technology that's being used to make passenger traffic as well as the trade between Mexico and the United States much more efficient. I got to be along for part of the tour with Ariel and Colleen, and so at least the last three days I got to see some of the same things they did along the border in a more limited way. And I'm really interested to dive into this conversation to hear more about their thoughts about the evolution of ports of entry operated by U.S. customs and Border Protection, known as the CBP. So, Ariel and Colleen, thanks for coming on the podcast.

[00:02:01.16] 

Thanks for having us.

[00:02:02.17] 

Great to be with you, Andrew.

[00:02:03.24] 

Well, I've been to the border many, many times and you know, at one point wrote a book about the deep interconnections between U.S. And Mexican border communities called Vanishing Frontiers. But there are a lot of changes going on at the border, right? And you Know, every time I go back, things seem profoundly different and then they're different from place to place across the border too, which is something I know you saw as you went from side to the other. I mean, you know, each, each border crossing is a world unto itself. Do people, you know, I don't think people necessarily know how much operations have changed in recent years both regarding processing of migrants and also the movement of people and, and vehicles across the border. Can you walk us through some of the procedures and technologies that you saw?

[00:02:43.02] 

Yeah, so I think it's really important to understand that the ports of entry are these multi layered and complex areas along the U.S.-Mexico border. And so they're responsible for the flow of legitimate goods and travel. And they're also responsible for looking towards any national security threats that might be present. So they're processing pedestrians both in vehicles and who are walking over connecting bridges. They're processing trucks that are carrying cargo, busses full of people or tourists. And then they're also processing a subset of migrants who are being processed under the Title 42 exemption program. And so I think that there's a lot of interesting things that are happening. They have technology to identify threats and pedestrians. That's thermal technology or X-ray technology. They also have larger X-ray machines for cargo, and then they have smaller scanning technologies as well as canine units and walking through and sniffing. And so these are really massive operations the entire economy relies on. But also people are crossing daily for school or for work. And so there's kind of a massive threat radar that exists there that the, that the Office of Field Operations is trying to coordinate every day.

[00:03:57.24] 

What are they worried about? I mean, what you say, threat operations. I mean, what is it? You know, most people are crossing legally. Most people are, you know, on their way for a legitimate purpose. But what are they on the lookout for when they're, when they're searching people, you know, why, why stop people at all?

[00:04:12.13] 

They're looking for any person that may be using fraudulent documents, for example, who may be trying to enter the United States under a fraudulent visa or a fraudulent passport. They might be looking for illegitimate goods, whether that's drugs or arms or any sort of something that could be dangerous to the United States. They are also looking for any sort of disease or something that could be present on agricultural goods. And so because of the wide variety of people and goods that cross through the border, they're inspecting for a lot of different potential threats that could exist.

[00:04:49.18] 

Yeah, and this is, I mean, this is depending on the month you look at it, either the largest trading relationship the U.S. has or the second or the third largest. I mean Mexico, Canada and China keep trading places there. But you know, they're all, those three are an overwhelming percentage of U.S. trade. So there's a lot of people moving through that and there's a lot of people on border communities going back and forth every day, including people work across the border, study across the board. It's a lot of people, right? I mean it is amazing numbers of people you see going across. And tourism, you can add all sorts of reasons. Fentanyl is something that's gotten a lot of attention. And so let me just, you know, start with that also. I mean, that is something that has certainly gotten a lot of attention. We know that most illicit drugs pass through ports of entry, not between ports of entry. There are some that pass through between ports of entry, but overwhelmingly comes through ports of entry. How much was that a focus? How much are people looking out for, you know, our CBP officers looking out for that?

[00:05:39.10] 

And how is the technology evolving to make it easier to both detect fentanyl but at the same time not stop traffic along the way?

[00:05:47.16] 

Thank you, Andrew. So that's really a, it's a really good point and one that we asked many times when we talk to officers at the ports of entry. One of the key ideas they kept telling us that is that their operations are founded on a multi-enforcement approach that requires a focus on risk management. So they're always trying to understand either before someone gets to the port of entry and first inspection, they're trying to understand what's coming and how that traffic may be different from the day prior if they're commuters or how that may be actually coming for the first time to their ports. This allows them in addition to technology like driver or license plate scanning, the Colleen mentioned the canine teams as well as general walking officers walking up and down the ports of entry to try to detect how or any suspicious activity. And that's a key important component of this for drugs like fentanyl and others. It's true. We know that the majority of these interdictions are at ports of entry. And it's something that has been actually true for now a few years. What is important in this case is that the role of technology has been important in specifically trying to detect and adapt to smugglers own adaptations of drug trafficking,

[00:07:03.21] 

right? We've seen and we saw several different types of technology including Gemini scanners where an agent, all they have to do is just point the scanner toward the substance that they're trying to detect or identify, and they're able to detect what, what type of drug it is, and if it isn't a drug, what are the composition of the chemicals that are in there. At the same time, we saw that there are broader machines, larger machines that are meant to detect much more, much more quickly any potential threats. And if, and once a threat is, or suspicion of a threat is identified, drivers or cargo or pedestrians are then routed to a secondary inspection. And it is at that point in that second inspection where a much more thorough search occurs, where the passenger, if it is a pedestrian vehicle the passenger is taking, gets off the car and is taken somewhere else. And then officers, a team of officers begins to conduct that type of search. In the commercial trade, the commercial travel is a little different. There are bigger and longer vehicles, of course, and so there are certain technologies to scan that. I'm happy to go into that too.

[00:08:11.06] 

But specifically for drugs, it is on one hand trying to understand what the suspicion is, who and how to take people without trying to stop the traffic that has to flow through the ports every day in the thousands, if not millions of cars at the same time. And so specifically here, I think the technology will continue to adapt. We saw that with our own eyes. The canines specifically are being trained and regularly trained to detect new and other sort of combinations of drugs. And fentanyl being the number one right now at the border. But it is an important case. And clearly drugs do not just come through the ports of entry, they also come between ports, but the majority of them do come at ports of entry.

[00:08:50.07] 

Colleen, tell us about high energy scanners, because I was absolutely fascinated by those, you know, and in the subset of things that Ariel is talking about, right. I mean, the high energy scanners are kind of the new, the new technology. But I was both fascinated by what they can do, but also the fact that they're trying to put them before people get to the actual border checkpoint, and that there's a logic behind that that, you know, is trying to balance equities here.

[00:09:11.24] 

Sure, yeah. Thank you, Andrew. That's a great question. We also really enjoyed getting to see a lot of this really interesting technology along the way. So several of the ports that we visited have this new technology called multi energy portals, or MEPs. And what that means is it creates some efficiency because the driver does not have to get out of the vehicle. And so when a truck is driving through a portal, the first part of that portal has a low energy because the driver is still in the cab. And so they want to ensure the driver's safety. So there's a low energy scan that takes place that does provide an image of the driver and the cab to check for any anomalies that may be existing there. And then as it moves to the back of the truck where the cargo is held, there's a higher energy scan that occurs that creates this picture of the, the back of the truck. And then there are two officers that are in a separate area that one of the officers is scanning those images that are received. And the other officer is looking at the truck's manifest, which means the list of goods that are supposed to be in that truck, as well as scanning the license plate, having any background on the driver that may be necessary, or any other information that gets there.

[00:10:22.23] 

And this sort of dual purpose creates one image of who's driving the truck, what's in the truck, what should be in the truck, and allows the officers to look through all of that information to determine if there are any anomalies or any kind of interesting issues that might warrant a secondary inspection. For example, if the truck made a stop along the way that wasn't part of their manifest, they may send that truck to secondary because that's kind of an anomaly in the journey. And so these new machines allow for a more efficient scan. It really just takes a matter of seconds for the truck to, to drive through without the driver getting out. And then that scan is immediately transmitted to the officers who are adjudicating. In Brownsville in particular, we saw that they have these MEPs in what they're calling their pre primary inspection. So every truck that goes up to that port goes through one of these machines because that's just a part of their flow of traffic. And so they're able to get that image for each of the trucks and then determine if, if those trucks may go through another scanning machine, which usually provide a bit of a different image or may take longer because they're a little bit of an older model.

[00:11:32.07] 

But the MEPs, the Multi Energy portals, really seem to be kind of this up and coming idea that most ports of entry are trying to get get to.

[00:11:41.10] 

I mean, I was right, I said high energy, but it's multi energy portals because they really have this ability to do the lower energy when people are involved in the higher energy. Once you, you get into the cargo section, I mean, they really are quite something. And as someone who spent a lot of time sitting in lines at the U.S.-Mexico border in my life, I mean, the great thing is you see that it actually you know, both has better detection technology, you know, to deal with threats, but at the same time it, you know, if you do it in a pre-inspection way, if you do it before people are getting to the actual line, you're actually able to check and do it, you know, see if there's any reason to actually have to do a second inspection. So this actually moves things a lot quicker.

[00:12:18.24] 

Exactly.

[00:12:19.08] 

I mean, it's both safer and quicker. And that's sort of the, that's the holy grail here, if you want is, you know, how do you actually know more about what's coming across but spend less time doing it in a way that allows people and goods to move quickly, right? Disrupts people's life less and make sure that goods are less costly, right? Because we depend on those goods moving quickly for the prices we're paying for anything from produce to cars. Let's turn a little bit to the immigration side because increasingly ports of entry have been asked to do lots of new things on the immigration side. They've always had an immigration role, but it certainly increased. You know, they are playing a huge role right now on Title 42 exceptions. And if the proposed rule on, on asylum goes through, that will require people to get an appointment. Most people get an appointment and go through ports of entry. They're going to play a huge role in the asylum process. They've always had some role in this, but they're going to play a much larger role, you know, and so thinking a little bit about capacity and processing and how this works matters a lot in terms of the way U.S. Immigration policy really works at the border.

[00:13:24.12] 

So, you know, what, what did you learn about the way immigration processing works at ports of entry?

[00:13:29.11] 

Well, that's a very important question, especially when the flows that we're seeing of migrants coming to the ports has increased significantly over the last several months. Specifically, we saw in El Paso and in other sectors that migrants who are growingly frustrated are attempting to either, you know, get through the ports or try to identify other ways to make it through the ports to try to make it to the United States. And that has its own risk management strategy from OFO officers. The CBP One app is perhaps the most central component of this processing and it includes in each port of entry there's a dedicated space where officers are able to conduct these exemptions. Migrants are intended to have received appointments while they were waiting in Mexico, in Mexico City or the border area. We know there's been significant limitations on available of appointments across the ports of entry. That's something that has been a significant criticism. We also know that there's other criticisms of the application not recognizing pictures of Haitian migrants and others. And in general, it's actually improved significantly since it started implemented. Most folks that we talk to at the ports understand that this is really a scheduling.

[00:14:43.23] 

The CBP One app is really more about scheduling than screening, which should be something that needs to be adapted. But at least in the short term, the application has allowed migrants to be able to have a more predictable process once they arrive at the ports. It's intended to take a few hours, once migrant arrives at their appointment to try to be processed, screened, and then released into the United States and or given an NTA, depending of how they get there. An NTA here is a Notice to Appear. It is intended to potentially be a more relied tool going forward, especially after and if Title 42 ends. But what we found, at least from the officers that really struck to me when we were there is that different ports of entry have different capacities to process people. Some places, like in Brownsville, they have higher capacity, better spaces to do this. They are used to doing this because they were also a site when MPP was in place. Immigration protection protocols. And then there are smaller ports like the Rio, and even in some places like Yuma that struggle more because they have less. Less facility. Less people there to be able to do this.

[00:15:57.10] 

And it does take a toll. And I think it's an important to cover this. It does take a toll because it does move as more of the focus is focus, as most. Most of the focus shifts to processing people on their CBP One, potentially at the sports. It does take away the number of people sometimes from other screen facilities that we just discussed. And I think it's. It's a work in progress. Again, it's not perfect, but it has CBP One in some ways brought order to the ports.

[00:16:26.23] 

So on one side, there's a lot of order here, right. And you saw a fair amount of order differences from port to port and certainly differences in capacity. But there are a couple issues that are still. I mean, couple areas that still need to be looked at, right? Considerably. And one you mentioned, Ariel, which is, you know, screening people. Right now, the app doesn't. It can give people appointments, but it doesn't say anything about what their need is. And of course, this becomes a scheduling app for asylum as we're expecting to happen in May if the proposed rule goes into effect, you know, or any version thereof, right? When Title 42 ends, you know, it's supposed to actually be a scheduling app for asylum, but it doesn't tell you anything about people's particular, you know, vulnerabilities right now for exceptions or protection needs. So it seems like that's a missing piece right now. And on the other side, again, I mean, very early processing, but people are basically being released with parole and Notice to Appear. There's no credible fear hearing going on there, right? So there's not a processing outcome also in this. Talk a little bit about that.

[00:17:23.22] 

Yeah, precisely. So previously, when NGOs were in charge of the Title 42 exemption process, they were really identifying individuals in Mexico who had a specific vulnerability. And that vulnerability could be a very severe health risk where they need immediate hospitalization. On the U.S. Side, the current app does not allow for the urgency of some of the vulnerabilities that exist. And in some ways, it definitely favors those who maybe are more tech savvy, have a better cell phone, maybe have access to more stable Wifi. And so the unintended result of that is that the people that really have some of the greatest vulnerabilities aren't necessarily getting access to the appointments that are available. And then the other piece of that is that as people are coming through, it is adding to some of the backlog that goes into those secondary agencies that we've talked about before. And so as more people are given NTAs we were hearing, you know, years down the road for their court hearing. And so it is putting people into this sort of liminal legal status as they await their next step in their next court hearing.

[00:18:36.02] 

Yeah. So if this is going to be the orderly process, right? It's going to switch from vulnerabilities to protection needs. And, you know, it's not exceptions to Title 42. It'll be scheduling asylum port. It does seem you have to figure out how you prioritize who gets an appointment in some sort of way that isn't just the luck of the draw, right? Yeah. And doesn't encourage people to come to the northern border because that's. I mean, this has been true of U.S. policy for a long time. It wasn't created by the app, but. But the, the reality is, you know, since you can't get an appointment from anywhere else, your incentive is if you have protection needs or you think your protection needs is to come to the northern border of Mexico to try and get on the app and stay as long as you need to. And that's a huge missing piece. And then the other side is. And you know, I kept trying to imagine I was with you in the last couple days there. The, you know, where you would do credible fear screenings. You know, how you could do that in some sort of, you know, real time and you obviously can't do it the same day.

[00:19:29.04] 

People need time to prepare and you know that that seems to be a missing piece on the other side that needs to be built in. Is, you know, is there, you know, other than releasing people into a system where they're not going to get a, a result for years and they're not going to get hearing for years, right? I mean they're not going to have an opportunity to talk to an asylum officer or go to an immigration court. You know, you're kind of in, you'll be in limbo, you'll be in a liminal status as you said. So yeah, this is, I mean we're getting to the end of our talk here. This is great. I know you can go on endlessly here because you saw so much across. Tell me one thing before we end that you were surprised by as you went from, from port to port. What surprised you the most? Ariel?

[00:20:06.05] 

Yeah. To me one of the most surprising things that I take away from our visits to the ports is just the different dynamics that exist in each one of them. And we went to the San Ysidro port of entry that is just has 46 lanes. It has significant if not millions of traffic per day, certainly thousands. There are just so many inner workings between officers there as well. And then we've gone through smaller ports like the port of Hidalgo and where there are still some bridges that are being upgraded but. But the traffic just tends to be smaller. And also one of the places where most migrants are trying to arrive to so the infrastructure and capacity just that changes from one port to another is just so impressive. And as well as in some places it's not just traffic of we discussed cars, pedestrians and trucks. Some places have also railroads and how you screen trains that are coming through the different stakeholders that are involved because maybe in one sector the bridge for the railroad is owned by a private company. And so this working of different actors to come together and create this vastly organized processing is significantly a significant undertaking that I think was just impressive to see how officers daily work in this type of flows.

[00:21:23.03] 

And again not perfect but still very impressive in their orderly flows that we ever seen even with the changes to CBP One and the Tile 42 exceptions.

[00:21:31.22] 

Yeah, and we do think this is sort of the federal government is running these ports of entry, but it actually, I mean, they have the ultimate authority about who comes in, right? And what vehicles come in. But, in fact, many of the ports are owned in all sorts of different ways, right? The physical infrastructure is owned by local governments. It sometimes is its own corporation with stakeholders from different local government. It's quite a fascinating patchwork. And, and certainly you can't get to a port of entry without going on a, a state or local road. And so these are all sort of interacting pieces. Colleen, what surprised you?

[00:22:03.06] 

I think for me it was the ability or the differences among all of all of the ports that we saw and the challenges that they would have in scaling up. And so that kind of falls into two buckets. One is with technology or even with building of more lanes. So as we know, cargo increases about 3% every year, and in 2022 it was upwards of, of 12%. And so the flow of goods and trade is increasing. And so ports need to be able to adapt to that reality, and they want to adapt to that by being able to keep orderly processing and get people through in a good amount of time. But they also need to supplement that with the necessary protections through screening and scanning. And the ability to do that really depends somewhat on the geography of where they're located. In San Ysidro, you're really directly up against Tijuana. There's not a lot of room to grow there, whereas maybe in some places in Texas there may be more space. Additionally, the boundary line, the ability to put in any sort of pre primary is really limited to where the boundary line falls and where the port exists.

[00:23:11.16] 

And then the same goes for migrant processing. The ability to scale up processing really depends on the infrastructure, but it also depends on the manpower. And so all of the technology in the world is great, but if that can't be supplemented with the officers to oversee and be able to adjudicate, it's it really. It wouldn't, it wouldn't work. And so the same goes for migrant processing. In order to scale that up, you have to have the space, but also the people to do that.

[00:23:37.21] 

Okay, great. That's a lot to think about. I wish we could carry this conversation on, which we will do separately, but not on this podcast because we got to let our listeners go. But Ariel and Colleen, thank you so much for, for being here today.

[00:23:50.04] 

Thank you, Andrew.

[00:23:51.11] 

Thank you.

[00:23:55.03] 

Ariel Ruiz Soto and Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh with MPI's U.S. immigration Policy Program. They are working on an MPI project looking at border management in the United States. Informed by experiences in other countries around the world, with the aim of providing recommendations on on how operations can be more effective and efficient. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Department of Homeland Security and CBP officials, both in Washington along the border, for facilitating our visits to the ports of entry, both for my colleagues and me, and Muz Chisti, another colleague who joined for some of the trip, as well as well as a number of people in local governments and NGOs that met with us in border communities to talk about the immigration piece of this. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the World of Migration. You can find all the episodes for World of Migration and other MPI podcasts online at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts or find us wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for World of Migration and please leave us a review while you're there. This episode was produced by Yoseph Hamid and Michelle Mittelstadt and made possible with the help of Lisa Dixon. Our music is a song called Geographer by Bright Idea.

[00:25:02.12] 

My name is Andrew Selee and thanks again for listening.