Nuevo León strengthens its Texas alliance and sets a date for two already-authorized bridges at Colombia-Laredo

On August 27 and 28, 2026, a Nuevo León delegation led by Governor Samuel García traveled through Austin, San Antonio and Laredo. Press coverage of the trip places alongside him Secretary of Economy Betsabé Rocha Nieto, the Sub-secretary of Investment, Innovation and Artificial Intelligence (SIIIA), Emmanuel Loo, and members of the Nuevo León Council, the state's public-private advisory body.

The bulletin the state issued as the tour began frames the purpose in its own words: to attract more foreign investment and to identify opportunities for collaboration in innovation, investment and initiatives that strengthen the state's competitiveness.

The Austin agenda

The first stop was a meeting between the Nuevo León Council and Opportunity Austin, which the bulletin describes as the regional economic development alliance that coordinates innovation, investment, talent development and quality-of-life efforts in that region. The program then called for a working session with the Texas Business Leadership Council.

In San Antonio, the NADBank Summit and a Tech Bloc memorandum

In San Antonio the published program called for a meeting with Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and for the governor to witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Government of Nuevo León and Tech Bloc San Antonio, the nonprofit devoted to technology-focused economic development in that city and in Central Texas.

García Sepúlveda also delivered the keynote at the 2026 NADBank Summit, the North American Development Bank's annual gathering. His presentation, "Nuevo León, the Leader of Foreign Direct Investment and Infrastructure in Mexico", centered on integrating the corridor that links Monterrey with Laredo, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas.

The Colombia project does not begin with this announcement: it already holds a presidential permit

Fourteen months before this tour, the two bridges received the authorization that makes the project live on the US side. On June 13, 2025, President Donald J. Trump signed a presidential permit in favor of the City of Laredo, Texas, published in the Federal Register on June 20, 2025, at 90 FR 26189.

The document describes the work with a precision no press release matches. The authorized border facilities consist of the bridge over the Rio Grande, "including two new 4-lane spans for commercial traffic parallel and adjacent to the existing Laredo-Colombia Solidarity International Bridge Land Port of Entry", located at the connection between Texas State Highway 255 and the Nuevo Leon State Highway Spur 1, on the United States side of the border. The City of Laredo filed the application on November 14, 2024, and completed it on February 18, 2025.

The permit also sets conditions, and they are worth reading closely because they define the project's critical path. Before starting construction, the permittee must obtain the concurrence of the United States Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission. And it may not start until the Department of State notifies the permittee that it has completed its exchange of diplomatic notes with the Government of Mexico. In other words, that exchange is not a step the permit records as finished, it is one that has to be completed before the first shovel.

The permit carries a clock of its own: it expires five years after issuance if construction has not commenced, which means June 2030.

Three things become clear from that document. The first is status: the project holds a presidential authorization, subject to conditions that must be met before work begins. The second is who is who: the permit holder on the US side is not the State of Texas, it is the City of Laredo, a municipal government. The third is money: the permit requires the permittee to provide inspection facilities, infrastructure improvements, equipment and maintenance "at no cost to the United States".

What the governor announced in Laredo

On August 28, at the close of the tour, García Sepúlveda put scope, cost and schedule on the table. According to the state bulletin, he said the work consists of raising the operating capacity of the crossing with two new bridges for exports and imports, that it will cost US$200 million "paid in equal parts by Texas and Nuevo León", and that construction would begin in May 2027. Among those attending were Sub-secretary Emmanuel Loo, US Congressman Joaquín Castro and Henry Cisneros.

It is worth being precise about where each piece comes from, because they do not all rest on the same footing. The equal cost split is a statement the governor made at that event, and it is reported here as such. As of this update we have not located a public document on the US side describing that funding arrangement, and that contradicts nothing. The presidential permit authorizes the work, while the instrument that appropriates money there moves on its own calendar and under its own authority, which in this case is municipal. The permit itself points that way when it places the inspection facilities and infrastructure improvements on the permittee's side of the ledger. Anyone planning logistics around this project would do well to follow that process as closely as the Mexican one.

At the same event the governor previewed the widening and modernization of Nuevo León's State Highway 001 North, running from Salinas Victoria to the customs facility, which he placed within the Green Corridors project, and announced an industrial pole in the municipality of Anáhuac under the federal Plan México program.

On that pole it is worth being explicit, because versions circulate promising tax exemptions. A Polo de Desarrollo Económico para el Bienestar, the federal development-pole designation, formally exists once Mexico's Ministry of Economy publishes its declaration in the Diario Oficial de la Federación, and the federal registry of designated poles, checked in September 2026, lists none in Nuevo León. That is why this article does not describe fiscal benefits for companies locating there: the catalogue of those benefits becomes knowable with the declaration, not before.

The census does not set a target, it sets a ceiling

This is the figure the site got wrong and is correcting today. The headline of the official bulletin states that the work will "speed up and double crossings to more than 15,000 a day". The body of that same bulletin quotes the governor saying something different, in Spanish, translated here:

"We started with the basics, the customs facility. A forgotten customs house sat in a drawer for 40 years, and today it is moving to double the lanes. We went from 7 to 14 cargo lanes. (...) We have a census showing that by 2030 this customs facility will reach a ceiling of 15,000 daily crossings."

The 15,000 figure is not a target the project must hit or exceed. It is the demand ceiling a census projects for 2030. The difference matters if you are sizing an operation: a target is pursued and can fall short, while a projected ceiling is the volume the infrastructure would have to be able to absorb. The first is a promise, the second is a design requirement.

The word "double" in that headline, moreover, describes something that already happened. The governor is talking about the customs facility going from 7 to 14 cargo lanes, not about a future effect of the bridges.

What already operates and what is announced

Three different states of progress sit side by side in this story, so they are worth separating.

The modernized Colombia customs facility already operates. The governor described it going from 7 to 14 cargo lanes, and the highway feeding it is in service: what was announced is its widening.

The pair of new bridges is authorized but not built. There is a presidential permit dating to June 2025, with pre-construction conditions still to be evidenced, a construction start announced for May 2027, and no work under way as of this update.

Announced only, for now, are the State Highway 001 North widening and the Anáhuac industrial pole.

Why it matters if you invest here

Texas is Nuevo León's main trading partner and the natural destination for its manufacturing. The electrical equipment chain shows it well: in February 2026, GE Vernova announced it had closed the purchase of the remaining 50 percent of Prolec GE for US$5,275 million, taking full ownership of the company whose transformer operation in Apodaca this site has documented.

Colombia is Nuevo León's only crossing of its own into the United States. It is not one of the downtown bridges of the area. It sits in Anáhuac, the municipality (Mexico's rough equivalent of a county) that holds the state's short stretch of border, and it reaches Texas by a dedicated road, State Highway 255, which the presidential permit itself names as the connection point.

The heaviest detail in the permit is not the number of bridges, it is the qualifier. The two new spans are authorized for commercial traffic. This is not only about adding capacity, it is about separating freight from everything else, which is where the hours are lost. For a plant in Salinas Victoria, Escobedo, Pesquería or Anáhuac itself, that translates into an export route with less competition for the lane.

And the schedule can be planned around, with its conditions in plain view: a permit since June 2025, two conditions to satisfy before construction, a start announced for May 2027, and an authorization that lapses in June 2030 if work has not begun by then.

• Browse the directory of industrial parks in Nuevo León, organized by municipality.
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Correction note

This article was corrected on September 25, 2026. The version published on August 28 said "the goal is for the border port to surpass 15,000 daily crossings by 2030", following the headline of the official bulletin; the body of that same bulletin describes a demand ceiling projected by a census, and the text and the key data have been corrected accordingly. The equal split of the cost, previously written as this site's own assertion, is now attributed to the person who said it. The June 2025 presidential permit has been added, together with the conditions it sets before construction. The mention of tax incentives for the Anáhuac pole was removed, since no declaration has been published. A reference to a meeting with GE Vernova executives was also removed: neither official bulletin from the tour records it, and the only outlet that reports it gives figures for that company that do not survive checking. And the source list was corrected: it cited the bulletin from the start of the tour, which contains none of these figures, rather than the Laredo bulletin of August 28, which does.

Sources: Government of Nuevo León, Laredo announcement bulletin, August 28, 2026 · Federal Register, presidential permit signed June 13, 2025, 90 FR 26189 · Government of Nuevo León, tour kickoff bulletin, August 27, 2026 · GE Vernova, completion of the Prolec GE acquisition · El Universal · Quadratín Nuevo León · FreightWaves