Border Crossing Reopened at Tecate for 8 Hours a Day

Responding to complaints by business owners and others in this tiny border town, U.S. Customs officials reopened the international crossing for an hour Tuesday and announced that beginning today it will remain open for eight hours daily until further notice.

The border crossing here was among nine ordered closed Saturday at sundown after U.S. officials were tipped off that Mexican drug smugglers planned to kidnap an American border officer. Customs officials decided that the nine crossings, including Tecate, could not be adequately protected.

Stranded Mexicans

Jerome Hollander, a Customs spokesman in Los Angeles, said the crossing was reopened Tuesday to allow the departure of residents of Mexico who have been stranded on the U.S. side of the border since Saturday. Hollander said that the crossing at Andrade, Ariz., 10 miles west of Yuma, also was opened for an hour Tuesday and will also be open eight hours each day beginning today.

Dennis Murphy, a Customs spokesman in Washington, said that officials had been inundated with complaints about the Tecate closure. Merchants in Tecate, a town of 88 residents, complained that the border closings hurt their businesses because the residents of Tecate, Mexico, population 75,000, could not cross the border to shop in their stores.

“There was a great deal of business traffic in Tecate that was being hampered. So we compromised. If we keep the border open for only one shift, in the daytime, we think that we can adequately maintain security at the port during that shift,” Murphy said.

Border Patrol officials said that about 300 Mexican demonstrators, mostly children, on Tuesday protested the border closure at Andrade. The demonstration was noisy but peaceful and no incidents were reported.

Fred Boyett, assistant regional commissioner for Customs in Houston, said that the remaining seven crossings in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona will stay closed.