Beto O'Rourke seizes the offensive as Greg Abbott's policy causes massive backups at the border

Democrat Beto O'Rourke pounced on reports that Gov. Greg Abbott's inspection policy for all commercial trucks entering Texas from Mexico is causing massive trade backlogs and said Tuesday that the two-term Republican "is killing businesses and the Texas economy."

"It's going to be very bad for the Texas economy. It's going to be very bad for the national economy," O'Rourke said during a news conference inside an empty cold-storage warehouse in the border community of Pharr.

The former congressman from El Paso who will face Abbott in the November election was joined by two South Texans who said their livelihoods have been upended as trucks seeking to bring produce and manufactured goods into Texas are waiting in the rigs for up to 16 hours while each truck awaits a 45-minute inspection.

Abbott last week ordered the inspections, saying they are needed to help control the influx of migrants and illicit drugs into Texas. But the inspections being carried out by troopers from the Texas Department of Public Safety focus chiefly on the vehicles' roadworthiness and not on their cargo. It is up to federal agents to examine trucks' content, which typically takes place at checkpoints miles from the Rio Grande.

More: Texas inspections of cross-border commercial traffic choke international trade

Abbott said at a South Texas news conference of his own last week that his recent actions are needed because of what he described as the failure of President Joe Biden's administration to control the southern border.

But Joe Arevalo, a customs broker who owns the warehouse where O'Rourke staged his event, said Abbott's order has created "a domino effect of angry drivers" who are unable to efficiently bring goods to U.S. markets that are still struggling with supply chain issues related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"We are living through a nightmare," Arevalo said.

Polo Chow, whose trucking company brings parts to the Toyota Motor Manufacturing plant in San Antonio, said the safety inspections play no role in border security.

"It's not improving safety, it's not improving (the effort to control) illegal immigrants," Chow said. "It's not improving the war on drugs."

More: Here are Gov. Greg Abbott's plans for Texas border once Title 42 is lifted by President Biden

Meanwhile, Republican Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller sent a letter to Abbott urging him to scuttle the policy "on behalf of the people of Texas and the United States."

In an interview with the USA TODAY Network afterward, Miller was more direct.

"I'll just say it, this is just political theater," he said. "There's 20,000 trucks a day coming through Laredo (before the policy). Now, we're going to get about 700 a day. This has really backfired on him. It's really compounded the problem."

O'Rourke, who since even before officially entering the 2022 governor's race has been targeted by Abbott's campaign as being in favor of "open borders," used the delays caused by the inspections as a means to seize the offensive on a pivotal issue.

The former three-term congressman sought to link the backups to the rising prices and limited supplies shoppers are seeing at retail stores across Texas.

"When you see those trucks lined up miles deep all the way into Mexico, what you're seeing is inflation, what you're seeing is higher prices at the grocery store, and what you're seeing are more supply chain problems," O'Rourke said. "We are calling on Greg Abbott to end this policy today."

In a statement, Abbott campaign spokesman Mark Miner did not address the criticism from O'Rourke, border business leaders and labor groups about the economic ripple effect of the long delays caused by the inspections.

Instead, Miner sought to pin the blame on Biden, a Democrat who has pulled back from the hardline approach to immigration during the Republican Trump administration.

""Beto O’Rourke is completely out of touch with the border crisis that his friend President Biden created," Miner said. "The safety inspections are keeping dangerous vehicles and drivers off Texas roads and preventing cartels from continuing to distribute deadly drugs like fentanyl into Texas communities."

But the leader of a trade group association that trucks agriculture products into Texas from Mexico said the inspections are strangling cross-border commerce and that will likely lead to empty shelves at grocery stores.

"Last night, commercial trucks crossing the Pharr International Bridges were in a miles-long line that took until nearly 2 a.m. this morning to clear the bridge," Dante L. Galeazzi, president of the Texas International Produce Association, said in a letter to Abbott on Monday. "Today, the line is at a stand-still as trucks are crawling out of the import lot. Many carriers and brokers are reporting hours of non-movement.

"Border security is an important element of this region," he added, "but so is the trade that keeps millions of Texans employed."

Clyde Barrow, the chairman of the political science department of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said Abbott's new policy could backfire with a constituency the Republican governor is seeking to wrench away from the Democrats.

"This is having a negative impact on the local economy, because, as you know, the Valley economy is very dependent on cross-border traffic," Barrow said.

He said that while many of Abbott's get-tough border initiatives tend to play well in communities well north of the Rio Grande, South Texas voters are often mixed on the issue.

"For me, the paradox has always been that the further you get from the border, the more this stuff seems to play in a positive light," Barrow said. "It's like the less people know about what's actually going on at the border, the more they support these policies. But down here, generally speaking, they're not viewed in great favor.

"People are interested to see how the Republican Party is going to do down here because it's clearly surging to a certain degree."

John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at jmoritz@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @JohnnieMo.

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Truckers blocking Texas border allows Beto O'Rourke to go on offense