Monday October 13th was a holiday, the end of a long weekend - and as usual many people spent the day going across the border to Chetumal for recreation and shopping. But when they came back, they met some extraordinarily long lines - all because only one officer was on duty - at the end of a long weekend that's never enough. Today we asked the Director of Immigration what went wrong:..
Jules Vasquez
"Had to wait over two hours in some inordinate enormous lines and there was only one immigration officer on duty. What went wrong, did you all not anticipate people to be spending long weekend in Chetumal?"
Maria Marin, Director of Immigration
"No, it's not that we did not anticipate. For whatever reason sometimes staff do get sick over the weekend and these long weekends. We expect that the port commanders will be able to step up right away. We have advised our port commanders that whenever they asses their situation and they realize that they will needing extra staff at any border station or any port of entry, what they can do is advise headquarters because we have officers who are assigned to field offices and stations that can be pulled out and ask to assign to these border stations. We must get that request from the port commander and so we are looking into engaging in this as we speak because we realize that that situation did occur. I understand that the situation there was an officer or two became ill and did not report to work."
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