Mexican law enforcement have arrested three people and impounded two vehicles in connection with several commercial trucks that were set on fire in Reynosa on Wednesday.
“The State Public Safety Secretariat informs that State Police today secured two vehicles and detained three people accused of having participated in the burning of three trailers… at the Pharr International Bridge in this city,” Mexican authorities said in a news statement obtained by The Monitor on Thursday.
Authorities were tipped off to the alleged arsonists due to Mexico’s “C5” video surveillance service, which alerted Mexican police that people were setting fire to commercial trucks near the Pharr point of entry.
“A report from the C5 video surveillance service alerted police officers that several individuals were setting fire to two trucks on the bridge and another one near the Matamoros/Monterrey beltway, and a pursuit was immediately initiated,” the statement further reads.
Mexican officers intercepted one car in the Lomas del Real de Jarachina neighborhood in Reynosa and took three suspects into custody. Police also found a container with 25 liters of gasoline inside the vehicle.
Authorities later located an abandoned pickup truck suspected to have been used in the arsons.
Early reports indicated that the suspected arsonists were members of Mexican drug cartels who were attempting to force the end of a blockade that had shut down all traffic at the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge starting on Monday.
But accounts differ as to whether the trucks that were set ablaze were a part of the strike, which was orchestrated by independent Mexican owner/operator truck drivers in protest of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s policy to have the Texas Department of Public Safety inspect every single commercial vehicle crossing into Texas.
U.S. bridge officials said the fires had been set to trucks in Mexico that were waiting on the main highway leading to the bridge and were not a part of the protest.
“There were trucks on the road, on the main highway,” Fred Brouwen, director of operations for the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge said earlier this week. “The trucks that caught on fire were not the trucks here parked during the strike.
But Mexican officials say at least two of the trucks were on the bridge itself.
The so-called “Level 1” inspections DPS was conducting on the U.S. side of the border were taking place after the commercial vehicles had successfully crossed through the gauntlet of inspection protocols by U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement.
The manual DPS inspections were taking up to an hour per truck to complete, slowing traffic to a crawl.
Mexican authorities got the arson attacks under control shortly after 2 p.m. Wednesday. About an hour later, negotiations between the Mexican truckers and American business representatives proved successful, as both north and southbound lanes again reopened.
On Wednesday, Abbott reached an agreement with Nuevo Leon Gov. Samuel Alejandro Garcia to end the enhanced inspections in exchange for heightened border security measures on the Mexican side of the river.
The enhanced DPS inspections are also set to come to an end in Coahuila and Chihuahua after the governors of those two Mexican states reached similar agreements with Abbott in Austin on Thursday.
But Abbott promised the enhanced inspections would continue at ports of entry that border any Mexican state that has not reached an agreement with him — including at the Pharr bridge, which is bordered by the state of Tamaulipas.
Abbott said he expected to meet with Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca on Friday.
