How a Trucking Magnate’s Quest To Transform Eagle Pass Set Off a Political Fight

EAGLE PASS– Maverick County has struggled for years to provide basic services to the unincorporated communities that surround this border town. Wells in farming areas like Quemado, about 20 miles northwest of Eagle Pass, have gone dry, and water flowing through a nearby irrigation canal has slowed to a trickle.

“We need infrastructure,” said Olga Ramos, a county commissioner. “We don't have the money to redo a lot of these roads that we need... and we need water lines to extend water to my constituents.”

So when a trucking magnate from Laredo named Ruben Garibay showed up recently and offered to build a new cross-border bridge that could drum up tolls and spur economic growth, county officials were all ears.

The project, called the Puerto Verde Global Trade Bridge, quickly won the support of power players from Mexico City to Washington D.C., and is on track to break ground this year. It would add a six-lane commercial trucking span and a new rail bridge over the Rio Grande just north of Eagle Pass, bookended on both banks by state-of-the-art customs and administrative complexes. 

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The saga has grown so divisive locally that it upended this year’s primary elections and has pitted members of the county’s most prominent political family against each other. The county judge, a leading supporter of Garibay’s named Ramsey English Cantú, was temporarily suspended from office by a district judge in May after being accused in part of ordering the unlawful arrest of one of Puerto Verde’s most outspoken opponents. He went on to lose the Democratic primary runoff for county judge days after the removal.

“Somebody signs up to run for election, and the first thing you see is, ‘Are they for Puerto Verde or against?’” said Jose “Pepe” Aranda, a real estate broker who has served as both Maverick County judge and Eagle Pass mayor. “My cousin was running for school board. ‘OK, is he for Puerto Verde or against?’ Well, the school district doesn't vote on it.” Puente News and the Houston Chronicle interviewed dozens of residents and officials involved in the project, and reviewed hundreds of pages of public records, including business filings and digital communications. Together, they show Garibay, who was hardly known outside of Laredo before the project, used a flurry of political spending, strategic hires and lofty promises to become one of South Texas’ most influential figures. 

With help from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, he cut the time it usually takes to permit international bridges by years. He joined Gov. Greg Abbott on an exclusive junket to India and recently hosted Mexican officials close to President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has since endorsed the project. If he succeeds, Garibay could reshape the state’s trade landscape with Mexico. 

The self-assured 58-year-old built a business empire in the early 2000s as the North American Free Trade Agreement transformed his hometown into a major trade hub. He sees a similar opportunity for Eagle Pass, which has lagged behind other Texas border cities in career and industry growth.

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“This is a golden opportunity for Eagle Pass, whether they see it or not,” Garibay said in an interview in April. “They will eventually see it. And that’s OK. Sometimes it takes a man that is a trailblazer, that’s going to do his own thing regardless of what happens, because I know I’m not hurting anybody.”

Despite the opposition, county leaders have pushed forward with the project, agreeing in principle in April to buy a majority stake of the bridge from Garibay – a pivot from earlier indications that the venture would be entirely privately funded. The deal, which hasn’t been finalized, could lock the county into decades of steep debt payments, but also entitle it to future toll revenue.

The returns could be a “financial blessing,” Cantú said before commissioners voted to approve the agreement. Maverick is one of the poorest counties in the state, with a per capita income about half the U.S. average. 

“The county has absolutely nothing to hide on this project,” Cantú said. “The only thing the county has to do is to benefit.”

Gerardo “Jerry” Morales, a former county commissioner who defeated Cantú in the primary runoff and will face Republican Ruben J. Camarillo in the November general election, sees the Puerto Verde as a reckless gamble.“These private investors that come in, they don't live in Eagle Pass,” he said during a candidate forum in January. “They come in, take advantage of us, and they leave. I will not support a private investor that's gonna come into town at the cost of our residents.”

‘A blank canvas’

Born in Mexico and raised along the border in Texas, Garibay built his business empire from the ground up, turning an automotive repair shop run out of his mother’s carport into one of the biggest trucking outfits in Laredo.

His success coincided with Laredo’s rise from a small border outpost into a global trade hub. After NAFTA took effect in 1994, the flow of Mexican goods into the U.S. spiked. By 2000, Laredo opened the World Trade Bridge – eight lanes dedicated solely to commercial traffic, making it the biggest commercial port on the border. Today, Texas does more trade with Mexico than any other state.

The ripple effects from the bridge “turned my life around,” Garibay has said. “I was able to actually do something for myself and for my family.”

Garibay is trying to repeat that renaissance 100 miles up the border in Maverick County.

 In 2019, he bought a 15-acre pecan orchard in Quemado and said he planned to farm and run cattle there. Before long, he began buying up nearby farms and openly discussing the bridge idea. Today, Garibay and a string of connected companies have purchased more than 4,400 acres, stretching nearly to the Eagle Pass city limits, according to county property records.

The idea for the bridge, Garibay said, was a natural evolution. Trade with Mexico has nearly quadrupled since the World Trade Bridge was built 25 years ago, but the infrastructure supporting it along the Texas border has not kept up. That includes in Laredo, where 18-wheelers regularly clog roadways and idle for hours in line to cross the World Trade Bridge. Texas officials estimate those delays will only increase in the future, costing billions of dollars in lost gross domestic product.

Eagle Pass, about 100 miles to the north, could relieve some of that congestion. State and federal officials identified the city decades ago as a key hub in a future Port to Plains Corridor, a proposed alternative to Interstate 35 that would connect South Texas all the way to Alberta, Canada. But the city’s existing bridge that handles commercial traffic can only take on about 1,500 trucks each day, 10% of Laredo’s capacity.

Daniel Covarrubias, who leads the Texas Center for Border Economic and Enterprise Development at Texas A&M International University, said Eagle Pass is well-positioned to connect manufacturing centers in Mexico with markets in the U.S. But he was skeptical that new infrastructure alone could bring about the kind of transformation that Laredo saw in the early 2000s.

“Laredo's growth was driven by NAFTA creating entirely new trade volumes across the board,” Covarrubias said. Garibay’s private bridge is also poised to compete with several border cities, including Eagle Pass and Laredo, which have been working for years to expand their public bridge infrastructure. Eagle Pass has plans to double its own commercial bridge from six lanes to 12.

Puerto Verde advocates say the project won’t just add capacity, but will also make cargo screenings easier, faster and more reliable. The plans specifically call for equipping CBP agents who man the rail and vehicular bridges with x-ray-like surveillance capable of quickly screening 100% of goods. 

Maverick County is an ideal location because it “allows us to start from scratch,” said Rolando Pablos, a former Texas secretary of state who worked as a consultant for Garibay. “It's the only place along the U.S.-Mexico border where we can actually build a state-of-the-art futuristic border crossing, because it's a blank canvas.”

As envisioned, the bridges would connect Garibay’s property on both sides of the border, making it some of the most valuable in the area. The spans would funnel trucks and trains from warehouses in Mexico that Garibay plans to build and own onto Garibay’s properties just outside of Eagle Pass city limits, where he plans to construct another warehouse complex to receive all the incoming freight.

“Yes, there is an opportunity for me here, business-wise,” he said during a press conference in 2024. "But this is also my way to give other kids who are in my situation or were in my situation to get that same opportunity.”

 A study commissioned by Puerto Verde in 2023 estimated that the project would drive billions in new economic development across the region, and funnel millions of dollars into county, city and school district coffers. 

Competing bridges

Rolando Salinas, the city’s former mayor, said Garibay pitched him hard on the project, even sending him a bottle of tequila and a box of Mont Blanc cigars. But he struggled to pin Garibay down on the finances, or on what the project would mean for the city, which derives 1/3 of its annual $60 million budget from tolls collected on the city bridge with which Garibay will potentially be competing.

 “‘You have to give me some guarantees the city won’t lose out on money from the bridge,’” Salinas recalled telling Garibay. “He said he wouldn’t be willing to share.”

So Garibay turned his attention to the county. In June 2023, he donated $5,000 to the campaign of newly elected county judge Ramsey Cantú, a large amount for a Maverick County race, according to finance reports. Less than a month later, Cantú convinced the commissioners court to pursue a federal bridge permit on Garibay’s behalf. 

Under Cantú’s leadership, the county would also enter into a public-private partnership with Garibay to construct the bridge. The details of the partnership were vague, and the county refused to say how much money, if any, it had committed to Garibay — or how much it stood to benefit from the project. 

Cantú did not respond to requests for comment.

Local suspicions of Garibay are so high that residents have begun to see his hand in everything the county does. In 2023, Cantú ordered the arrest of Enriqueta “Queta” Diaz, a former county judge, for heckling commissioners over a plan to finance $7.2 million in water infrastructure improvements to Quemado that critics saw as a way to help Garibay access utilities. When two residents sued Cantú in April under a Texas law that lets district judges remove elected officials for incompetence and misconduct, they cited that incident. A judge temporarily suspended Cantú, whose term expires at the end of the year, ahead of the runoff election he lost in May.

“I feel like they have all joined together in backroom dealings and whatnot to sell out the community,” said Alfredo Sanchez, who lives near Garibay’s estate northwest of Eagle Pass.

Residents in Seco Mines, the tiny community just outside of Eagle Pass where the Puerto Verde bridges would be located, say they’re concerned about truck traffic, noise and fumes and flooding in the creek it will run along. Renderings of the project show the rail line and commercial bridge reaching out like arms to embrace the neighborhood.

Graciela Maldonado lives about half a block from the proposed customs facility in a small, neatly kept brick and stucco home that her father built in 1988. Standing outside of her home, its whitewashed front decorated with Dallas Cowboys memorabilia, Maldonado pointed out where a raised train line will run along the nearby Seco Creek and the 24-hour port facility will be built on pastureland across the street from her neighbors’ homes.

“They’re going to be constructing the international bridge on our backyards,” Maldonado said. “So they’re going to actually box us in.”

Ted Cruz steps in

Federal bridge permits typically take several years to acquire because of rigorous environmental assessments.

 Garibay set out to circumvent the process. He hired a group of influential consultants and lobbyists and started writing checks to politicians who could help open doors. Between 2021 and the 2024 election cycle, Garibay donated nearly $1 million to members of Congress, including South Texas U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar, Tony Gonzales, Vincente Gonzalez and Monica De la Cruz. He had never donated to federal officials before 2021, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Puerto Verde itself paid more than $1.5 million to D.C. firms, according to OpenSecrets, a group that tracks lobby spending. Much of that went to Bobby Babcock, a lobbyist with close ties to Cruz. Garibay also donated more than $100,000 to Cruz’s campaign funds.

At the time, Cruz was the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee that oversees trade. Cruz was coming up on a reelection year, when bipartisan accomplishments can help sway general election voters.

Cruz backed the project, urging the Biden administration to approve Puerto Verde in a 2023 letter he cosigned with U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, in which they argued it would “support international trade, help address supply chain challenges, and support economic development and security for this critical region of Texas.” As an added stick, Cruz later recounted, he threatened to hold up Biden’s State Department appointments as long as the administration slow-played the bridge permits.

In late 2023, Cruz and Cuellar, who’s from Laredo, successfully added language into the annual defense spending bill that would temporarily speed up the permits for Puerto Verde and a handful of other new bridges.

It gave the administration 120 days to make a decision on the projects, regardless of whether an environmental assessment had been completed.  The Biden administration later approved four permits in Texas, including Garibay’s; the Trump administration approved another four before the legislation expired.

“Every year, Texas and Mexico have roughly $800 billion in trade and commerce that comes across this border,” Cruz said during a celebratory stop in Laredo shortly after the bill passed. “That’s jobs in Texas. That’s jobs in Mexico. That’s the lifeblood of South Texas.”

Meanwhile, Garibay was busy making inroads with officials in Texas. In Austin, he retained the influential lobbying firm HillCo Partners and gave the company’s political action committee $65,000. He also hired Pablos, the former secretary of state, who was appointed by Abbott. He started funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to the governor’s campaign, and spent tens of thousands more on fundraisers for Abbott at Garibay’s estate in Maverick County, which includes a swimming pool the size of a typical three-bedroom home. 

Abbott has never publicly backed the project. But he and his appointees in the state helped elevate Garibay, who was virtually unknown outside of Laredo before Puerto Verde. In 2024, Garibay was one of 19 people to travel with Abbott on an economic development trip to India organized by the Texas Economic Development Corporation. That same year, Garibay was invited to join the Border Trade Advisory Committee, a forum hosted by then-Secretary of State Jane Nelson, whom Abbott put in place.

“When you and I talked about getting you on the committee, I mentioned it to the secretary,” Nelson’s deputy, Carlos Ealy, wrote in a message, obtained under the Texas Public Information Act, to Garibay a few months earlier. “I believe she can also make a recommendation as chair of the BTAC.”

State Rep. Eddie Morales, a Democrat from Eagle Pass whose family owns a local tortilla factory and who is the nephew of Puerto Verde opponent Jerry Morales, also began pitching in on Garibay’s behalf. He carried a bill last year that would have given Garibay access to publicly-backed bonds and, in some cases, the power to seize land for his planned industrial park through a newly formed port authority. The initial version would have also installed Garibay, Babcock and a Puerto Verde consultant as three of the authority’s five board members, but Morales stripped their names amid pushback. 

 During a hearing on the measure, Morales acknowledged that some people were wondering, “Why are we going to have one individual with so much power on a development?”

“Well,” Morales said, “it's his money to begin with, and he has invested it through his company in the acquisition of both land in Mexico and… on the Texas side in Eagle Pass to make this thing work.” 

In a statement, Morales said he considered Garibay and Babcock for the port authority board “to bring experienced and knowledgeable individuals on port operations.”

Morales hasn’t reported political contributions from Garibay in campaign finance records, but he’s posted photos of them together at Garibay’s palatial San Antonio estate. He received $25,000 from HillCo’s political action committee, the biggest single gift it had ever given the Eagle Pass Democrat.

A spokesperson for Morales noted that HillCo donates to other House members, and that it has clients in Morales’ district. He said Morales attended a gathering at Garibay’s home in December 2023, and that it was “not organized as a campaign event for the representative.”

“There was no donation from Mr. Garibay,” the spokesman said.

 The bill sailed through the House with little discussion, but hit headwinds in the Senate, which is led by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Salinas, the former Eagle Pass mayor, warned Patrick in a letter that the proposal would create a “shadow governance structure,” and that the city had never been consulted about it. Critics also worried that a privately owned bridge would be more easily exploited by organized crime.

State Sen. Robert Nichols, a Jacksonville Republican who helped block the measure from reaching a vote, said he was partly concerned about the power it would give Garibay.

 “If you have somebody who doesn’t live in town, who decided to take a big piece of your town, control the vote of the board in your town, and the town doesn’t support it — who’s pushing the bill?” Nichols said in an interview. “It’s not the local community.”

‘No longer a Ruben Garibay project’

Garibay has always found a way of manifesting success.  As a child, he picked up English by learning to “simulate” what he heard around him. There were no English as a Second Language classes when he was in grade school — or as he puts it, “nobody handed us a crutch.”

His trucking business, Select Dedicated Solutions, started with one driver. That didn’t stop Garibay from approaching a major auto parts manufacturer and promising he could provide the services they needed — even though he didn’t have enough trucks to meet the client’s demand, Liliana Moreno, one of his employees, recalled in a video tribute for his 2025 induction into the Laredo Business Hall of Fame. (Garibay says he submitted bids to two different companies around the same time and unexpectedly won both, forcing him to scramble to meet the terms.)

Despite being overextended, he was somehow able to deliver, Moreno said.

“He would say, ‘I have this vision, this is how it’s going to be,’” she said. “And that’s how it would happen.”

That’s the approach Garibay has brought to Puerto Verde. After the Senate setback, Garibay sought to clear up any doubt about the bridge becoming a front for criminal activity. He hired Steve McCraw, the retired director of the Department of Public Safety and a close ally of Abbott’s, to help vet the project’s security plans and integrate the newer surveillance technology. McCraw said the work lasted several months. 

“You think he didn’t vet me before he took the job?” Garibay said.

There have been other signs, however, that the project may be on rocky footing. Records show Garibay is slipping into personal money trouble as his own debts go unpaid. 

Last year, American Express National Bank filed four lawsuits in Laredo against Garibay and two of his companies that own real estate in Maverick County accusing them of failing to pay more than $600,000 in credit card debt; two were later dismissed, though American Express refiled one earlier this year. In January, the Internal Revenue Service issued a lien against Garibay’s property, accusing him of owing $1 million in unpaid taxes. Garibay says he’s not strapped for cash; he’s in the midst of a maneuver to take advantage of a tax benefit related to losses his farming operation suffered.

Late last year, after Salinas, the former mayor, left office, Garibay began quietly lobbying the city of Eagle Pass to buy him out of the project.  Though Garibay said he thought they were close on an agreement, the city council ultimately voted against it this April. Two weeks later, Cantú and the Maverick County commissioners voted to carry out the plan instead of the city, offering to buy in at a 65% stake of the bridge in exchange for future toll revenue.

 That deal could be in jeopardy now, given Cantú’s primary defeat last month. If he wins the November general election – local elections here have historically been decided in the Democratic primary – Jerry Morales said he plans to push the commission to remove Puerto Verde from its federal bridge permit and instead partner directly with Eagle Pass on a new bridge located farther from the city. 

To critics, Garibay’s latest attempts to step back from the project have reeked of hypocrisy – in Puerto Verde’s federal permit application, Garibay indicated that “financing for the project will be led by the private sector as opposed to relying on publicly sourced funds.” But Garibay says he never planned to take on the entire endeavor himself.

“I've just been carrying the ball,” he said. “But it's no longer a Ruben Garibay project.”

And Maverick County isn’t the only player. In March, during a press conference with Sheinbaum, the head of Mexico’s state-owned development bank announced that it would be creating a public-private partnership to fund Puerto Verde’s construction on that side of the Rio Grande. The country pledged to invest $300 million, Garibay said. The Sheinbaum administration didn’t respond to a request for comment.

 “We're funded. It's happening,” Garibay said. “Tell me no other community along the U.S. border would love to have that honor.”