Observed and Perceived Inconsistencies in U.S. Border Inspections

Abstract Observations of traffic inspections at a U.S. land border port of entry in El Paso, TX indicate that the process is highly variable. In a series of 24 half-hour observation periods of ordinary non-commercial traffic, the average inspection duration ranged from 16.6 s to 56.6 s. The proportion of inspections which involved some physical search of the vehicle, as indicated by the inspector leaving the inspection booth, varied from 5% to 56% in different observation periods. In 4 out of 10 cases, the log-mean of inspection duration in simultaneous observations of parallel lanes of traffic differed significantly (p