In Maverick County, home of county seat Eagle Pass, officials have struggled for years to provide basic infrastructure for many locals, such as water lines and roads in unincorporated communities. So when a Laredo trucking magnate named Ruben Garibay proposed building a new international toll bridge, county leaders saw an opportunity.
Supporters of the bridge say it would boost trade with Mexico, spur economic development and generate new revenue for the county. The proposal quickly won support from local officials and influential figures both in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City.
But as the project’s details came into sharper focus, the bridge turned into one of the most divisive issues in South Texas.
Jason Buch, a freelance journalist who covers border politics and state government, joined Texas Standard with the story. Listen to the interview in the player above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: For our listeners who aren’t familiar with Ruben Garibay, tell us a little bit about him and why he became interested in Eagle Pass.
Jason Buch: So Ruben Garibay, he was born in Mexico; he grew up in Laredo, Texas. He has this kind of interesting rags-to-riches story.
In the early ’90s, he opened an auto repair shop in his mom’s garage. Turned out to be really great timing; NAFTA really changed Laredo and created this trucking boom. He was able to parlay the repair shop into a trucking company that became one of the largest companies in Laredo.
Then, five or six years ago, he started buying up all this real estate in Maverick County outside of Eagle Pass, which is like a hundred miles upstream from Laredo.
So tell us more about this bridge project that he came up with. How is it supposed to generate money for Maverick County?
So it’s supposed to be this ultra-modern, brand new dedicated trade bridge. There’ll be one span for trucks and one span for trains. It’s supposed to provide economic development for Maverick County.
So Eagle Pass has sort of lagged behind other border communities that had benefited much more from international trade. It would be a public-private partnership that would generate some amount of toll revenue for the governmental partners.
Well, as I understand it, this proposal has become incredibly divisive. What seems to be driving the backlash, and where is it coming from?
Part of it is from residents of the area where the bridge will be built. It’s just outside of Eagle Pass. It will run amidst residential neighborhoods. Part of it is, I think, locals being very uncomfortable with someone who’s coming from out of town with all these backers who are also from out-of-town.
There’s been legislation in Washington, D.C., to promote the project, legislation pushed in Austin to promote the project. So there’s just this idea that this person kind of coming out of nowhere to promote this very ambitious project in their backyards has a lot of people in the Eagle Pass area uncomfortable.
Well, he must have had some support from some quarters because he obviously built a lot of political support for this project. Your reporting, in fact, details Garibay’s political strategy. What did you discover?
Well, you could say that he could teach a master class in lobbying.
Before 2019, he really hadn’t given a lot of money to political campaigns. Since then, he’s spent more than $2 million combined on political donations and lobbying. He’s given to influential politicians like Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, who actually pushed legislation that helped fast-track permitting for this project.
Say more about the project costs and who’s expected to pay for this. Who are the winners and losers here?
This was initially proposed as being led by the private sector — that’s what some of the permit applications for federal permits to build the international crossing said. The details were very vague. There was going to be a public-private partnership. It wasn’t clear what amount of money the taxpayers would be on the hook for.
More recently, the government of Mexico has come in. Mr. Garibay says they’ve pledged $300 million to build the bridge on the Mexican side.
Maverick County has said that they will buy out up to 65% of his stake in the bridge and handle construction for that part of the bridge. In the meantime, he owns real estate on both sides of the bridge. So if this were to be constructed, he could develop that into industrial parks and commercial complexes.
So, is part of the pushback taxpayers being on the hook for something that might benefit him or his company directly?
Yes, that’s what I heard a lot from people in Eagle Pass, especially before the details of the actual amount that the government would be contributing. I heard from people saying, you know, we don’t know what we’re going to end up paying for this.
Now that the numbers are out there, people are unhappy with the degree that appears the government’s going to buy into this project.
Is Garibay trying to defend the bridge now? Has he come out with some sort of counter-argument?
He says this is a golden opportunity for Maverick County and Eagle Pass. He says he can repeat the success of Laredo, which is the number one trade port on the border.
He says he’s going to bring that type of success to Eagle Pass and that this is a chance for a region that has struggled with poverty, with economic development, to turn its fortunes around.
So where does the project stand today? Are they close to breaking ground or not?
So he says they’ll be breaking ground by the end of the year. I think the Mexico promise of investment has moved things, at least on that side of the border, at a more rapid pace.
The county judge who was his big supporter in Maverick County just lost his reelection bid. So there’s going to be a new judge next year, and that could change things.
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