Video still from NBC’s investigative report. NBC 5 DFW image
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On June 6, the NBC affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth aired an investigative report highlighting BLET’s opposition to Class I railroads being granted waivers that allow Mexican train crews to travel across the southern border and into the United States. A video link to the NBC story can be found here. BLET National President Mark Wallace was interviewed at length and other BLET officers spoke on background.
Wallace said the move opens a “back door” to allow more illegal immigrants to sneak into the country, especially in light of the recent arrest of a Ferromex employee for his involvement in a scheme to smuggle migrants into the country aboard freight trains.
As previously reported, two Class I railroads, Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) and Union Pacific (UP), have been granted permission by federal authorities to have engineers from Mexico take trains miles into the United States rather than stopping at the border as has been the long-time practice.
In late May, President Wallace and First Vice President Gary Best traveled to the southern border to meet with local BLET leaders to both observe rail activity at border crossings and to visit rail yards miles beyond the border where the railroads plan to take trains operated by Mexican nationals — and where those same railroads plan to take jobs away from American locomotive engineers. Also discussed was how these changes, if allowed to continue, would pose a threat to national security and operational safety.
Following the visit to the border, the BLET president sent a letter to President Trump to make him aware of what was happening and to ask the White House for assistance.
During the NBC interview, President Wallace said: “If there’s one industry that’s built America, it’s the railroad industry, and so we expect that our jobs be protected in the United States from Mexican nationals coming in and performing our work.”

BLET investigative trip to El Paso, Texas.