(The Center Square) – The San Luis Port of Entry is under new leadership.
United States Customs and Border Protection announced that Chris Leon will be the port’s new area director on Thursday.
“I am excited and humbled to lead the men and women at the Port of San Luis, and I look forward to working closely and collaboratively with our local stakeholders to ensure the region remains prosperous while also protecting the public we are proud to serve,” Leon said in a statement.
San Luis is in the Yuma Sector of the border, which has fewer illegal crossings compared with other parts of the southern border, but it still has had 39,336 migrant encounters so far in fiscal year 2024, according to CBP data.
However, the Port of Entry dealt with higher traffic when the Lukeville Port of Entry in the Tucson Sector shut down temporarily in December, according to Arizona’s Family, as staff in Lukeville was growing too busy handling illegal crossings to deal with the legal entry point. The CBP news release said that San Luis is the “second busiest border crossing” out of the six along the Arizona-Mexico border, with roughly 7.8 million people going through each year.
Leon previously was in charge of the port at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
“Today I bid farewell to the current CBP Director at the Port of [Sky Harbor], Chris Leon, who has been named the new Director of CBP at the port of San Luis,” Consul General of Mexico in Phoenix Jorge Mendoza Yescas tweeted in March. “With Chris, we developed a solid working and collaborative relationship for more than three years. The best of successes in the new role at the very important port of San Luis.”
The news release said that he would play a key role in the port’s “modernization project” that is meant to increase the size of the port in the fall of 2028.
