EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The El Paso trade corridor is one of the busiest on the Texas-Mexico border. More than 800,000 trucks and billions of dollars in parts and merchandise come across three border crossings every year.
But one of those portals is likely to shut down for good in late 2027 due to repairs, upgrades and the need to get polluting big rigs out of some El Paso neighborhoods.
That’s where the renovated but underutilized Marcelino Serna port of entry in Tornillo, Texas, east of El Paso comes in.
El Paso County Commissioner Precinct 2 David Stout has been championing taking the trucks of the Bridge of the Americas in the Chamizal area of South Central El Paso and routing them to Tornillo.
It’s a win-win proposition for him and other officials in the region. The problem has been the inability to persuade more stakeholders in Mexico to send their trucks that way.
The county is preparing to implement a $1.4 million study to figure out ways to get there and an accompanying effort that includes marketing the port and visiting potential users.
“The idea is to bring that level of crossings up […] to look at strategies on how we boost traffic to the Tornillo port of entry, especially taking into account they will no longer be able to come across BOTA.”
The port in 2024 saw only 20,795 trucks pass through compared to the 670,717 that came through the flagship Ysleta-Zaragoza commercial crossing. But the closing of BOTA means its current 133,841 trucks-a-year have to come across somewhere else. Stout hopes they will do so at the Tornillo facility.
The study will map the origin of cargo approaching the El Paso trade corridor, final destination, frequency of travel, border wait times and truck fuel usage.
“We’re also doing a pretty robust outreach campaign in the interior parts of Mexico. We have gone to Mexico City, we have gone to Torreon, Aguascalientes, Queretaro – many of the manufacturing hubs within Mexico that send products across the border,” Stout said Tuesday on Border Report Live.
The El Paso County official said he foresees long-term growth not just for the port in Tornillo, but for commerce all along the border. That’s been the long-term trend despite ups and down over the years having to do with recessions in the U.S. or with the Trump tariffs now.
“All signs point to it increasing, and very heavily, within the next couple of decades,” Stout said. “The phenomenon of nearshoring — bringing back operations to North America from Asia because of proximity – makes sense. We are going to be seeing a lot more cross-border commerce.”
Upcoming negotiations part of the five-year review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement could further boost border commerce, he said. That’s once the trade partners iron out issues such as tariffs and North American content of parts and goods exported to the United States.
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