Progress at the Ports

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on Monday that it will allocate 2,000 additional CBP officers to the United States’ ports of entry. Of the 2,000, 175 will be allocated to Arizona.

The additional officers were included in the federal budget deal reached in January to fund the remainder of fiscal year 2014. The Arizona Chamber encouraged the members of the Arizona delegation to be the proverbial “squeaky wheels” to ensure that Arizona received a share of these new officers, in order to facilitate trade with Mexico that 6 million Arizona jobs rely on.

Kudos to Rep. Salmon and Sen. Flake for leading the charge on this effort. Rep. Salmon put together a coalition of Arizona Representatives that included Rep.s Barber, Franks, Gosar, Grijalva, Kirkpatrick, Sinema and Schweikert to advocate for more CPB officers for Arizona’s ports of entry. Sen. Flake authored a letter with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) stressing the importance of additional CPB staffing at land ports of entry along the southern U.S. border.

Thanks to their efforts, Arizona will receive 175 of the 2,000 new CBP officers, 120 of whom will head to Nogales. This is an important first step in capitalizing on Arizona’s full trade and tourism potential.