System maintenance provokes customs chaos at Mexico-U.S. border

Scheduled attraction of a integer level for planetary commercialized astatine respective borderline crossings successful bluish Mexico is causing delays and different headaches for importers, exporters, and customs brokers shipping goods into the United States.

In precocious January, the Mexican Tax Administration Service (SAT) announced a one-week scheduled attraction outage for the Mexican Digital Window for Foreign Trade (Ventanilla Única de Comercio Exterior Mexicana, oregon VUCEM) level from Feb. 8 done Feb. 15.

With the level down, a contingency program was enactment successful spot by SAT, with shippers required to nonstop each related documents and invoices to their brokers to guarantee timeliness of clearance.

Unfortunately, the process has not gone smoothly.

Mexican Customs agents are struggling to make the indispensable paperwork arsenic they indispensable manually grip each customs documents, producing agelong lines for trucks and intermodal shipments, including trains.

The resulting delays of up to six hours person caused chaos astatine the Tijuana borderline crossing, according to the Animal Político website. The concern astatine the Reynosa and Ciudad Juárez borderline crossings is not overmuch better, with hundreds of vehicles waiting to beryllium cleared done customs.

With the integer commercialized portal undergoing maintenance, customs agents are struggling to efficiently process importers and exporters. (File photo)

Produce Bluebook, a work provided by Blue Book Services that helps businesses negociate fiscal hazard wrong the nutrient proviso chain, said determination were reports of eight-hour waits astatine South Texas points of entry.

It besides warned that nutrient shipments could beryllium delayed astatine different large points of introduction including Nogales, Arizona, and McAllen, Texas.

Freight shipping and logistics institution Mexicom Logistics describes VUCEM arsenic a level that “centralizes the procedures required for importing and exporting, providing a azygous transmission for the speech of accusation betwixt users and authorities.”

The level allows users to electronically taxable each indispensable documents and accusation for import and export operations done a azygous interface.

With reports from Animal Político and Blue Book Services