EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — The El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) gathered state and local leaders from Texas, New Mexico, and the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, to discuss an International Border Crossing (IBC) Strategic Plan aimed at improving cross-border movement in the Borderplex region.
The plan aims to establish a Steering Committee that will include representatives from both the U.S. and Mexico who will guide the planning process and help ensure the plan reflects shared priorities.
The IBC Strategic Plan focuses on the six international ports of entry across the El Paso Metroplex region, which include Tornillo, Ysleta-Zaragoza, Bridge of the Americas (BOTA), Paso Del Norte, Stanton, and Santa Teresa.
According to the El Paso MPO, the plan will deliver infrastructure, operational, policy, and coordination recommendations to improve cross-border mobility, safety, and efficiency.
El Paso MPO’s Executive Director, Eduardo Calvo, said the plan will require a “devoted” joint effort from multiple stakeholders.
“The plan is unprecedented in the sense that this region has never had a real strategic plan that looks at all of our border crossings as a system. One of the issues that we see is that the six crossings are viewed independently. With different economic and political interests,” Calvo said.
Calvo said that because the ports of entry in the El Paso metro region are managed by different entities, there has always been a lack of coordination to make overall cross-border movement more efficient.
The City of El Paso manages the Ysleta-Zaragoza, Paso Del Norte, and Stanton ports of entry on the U.S. side. El Paso County manages the Tornillo port of entry, while U.S. Customs and Border Protection manages BOTA and Santa Teresa on U.S. soil.
Mexican Customs manages the ports of entry on the Mexican side.
“How can we operate them more efficiently if we look at them as a system instead of six individual crossings? Of course, the crossings have different operational characteristics. Some are for cargo, some are just for passengers. But again, if we look at them as a system, can we achieve some efficiency to make cross-border movement of people, vehicles and goods a lot more efficient?” Calvo said.
According to the El Paso MPO, the IBC Strategic Plan is expected to be completed in late 2026.
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