UNITED STATES – The Lukeville-Sonoyta port of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border will reopen, a month after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) closed it due to an increase in immigrant arrivals.
Operations will also resume at the Eagle Pass International Bridge I in Eagle Pass, Texas, and at the west crosswalk at the San Ysidro port of entry in San Diego.
CBP closed the Lukeville crossing to reassign port officials to help Border Patrol agents process hundreds of migrants arriving in the desert a mile west of the port of entry.
The month-long closure of the Lukeville port of entry caused devastating effects on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
“During one of the busiest months for cross-border trade and tourism, our understaffed and under-resourced Border Patrol was forced to close a vital port of entry,” said Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Arizona, in a written statement.
“Border communities cannot continue to pay the price for the federal government’s failures. Congress must come together to approve emergency supplemental funding to hire more officers and increase resources to secure our border.”
Jorge Mendoza Yescas, consul general of Mexico in Phoenix, said he was pleased with the Biden administration’s decision to reopen the Lukeville border crossing.
“It will reactivate the economy of northwest Sonora, which depends heavily on tourism from Arizona,” Mendoza Yescas said via a WhatsApp text message. “Also, people from that region of Sonora who have family and cultural ties, as well as those traveling to (Arizona) for pleasure, will again be able to enter the United States where they normally do.”
