Trade-Offs Between Security and Inspection Capacity: Policy Options for Land Border Ports of Entry

Observations of primary inspections at land border ports of entry between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, indicate that the majority of inspections are of limited duration and detail. Three policy options are considered for allowing more thorough primary inspections. The first would require all primary inspections to involve opening a vehicle compartment. This would increase average inspection times from 34 s to 70 s. The second option would limit the time in primary inspections to 63 s. Vehicles requiring more time to complete the inspection process would be referred to secondary inspections, which would greatly increase the frequency of referrals to secondary inspections but would allow for the percentage of primary inspections that involve physical inspection of at least one vehicle compartment to be increased to 35%. The third option would increase the number of crossers in the Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection (SENTRI) program, in which prescreened participants are subject to expedited inspections. Reducing the volume in the non-SENTRI lanes would allow more detailed inspections in these lanes. A doubling of the current SENTRI program would be required to raise the average non-SENTRI, primary inspection time from 34 to 40 s. This study concludes that none of these options, whether alone or in combination, has the potential to avoid conflicts between national security requirements that favor more detailed inspections and local traffic flow consideration that favor less detailed inspections. These strategies are amenable to incremental implementation, however, and such incremental implementation may increase the thoroughness of the inspection process without interfering with local traffic flows.