April 05, 2024

Castro, Cuellar, Gonzalez, and Casar Call on USPS to Halt Changes That Could Lead to Mail Delays in South Texas

SOUTH TEXAS — Today, Democratic congressmen representing communities in South Texas – Reps. Joaquin Castro (TX-20), Henry Cuellar (TX-28), Vicente Gonzalez (TX-34), and Greg Casar (TX-35) – released a letter urging U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to halt a plan to shift mail processing operations away from Corpus Christi and McAllen to a centralized processing facility in San Antonio.

Earlier this year, the implementation of a similar shift in Houston-area mail processing led to widespread mail delays. In their letter, lawmakers requested a detailed explanation of how USPS will accommodate a higher volume of mail in the San Antonio processing and distribution center (P&DC) without exacerbating existing challenges with mail delays across South Texas.

“Small businesses and residential customers in our districts depend on reliable USPS service to send packages, receive medications, pay bills, and vote in elections. Our communities have serious concerns about the impact a new, centralized San Antonio processing facility will have on local USPS operations,” the lawmakers wrote.

“While the USPS has laid out its plan to install new mail sorting equipment at the Corpus Christi and McAllen P&DC, we are concerned that USPS has not thoroughly assessed the level of resources needed to immediately accommodate a much higher volume of mail at the San Antonio P&DC. It is our understanding that the San Antonio P&DC facility is too old and too small to house new equipment necessary to sort more mail. The facility is already struggling to process normal mail streams. Just this past holiday season, several local news stations reported that the San Antonio USPS had a major backlog of packages to deliver...We hope you can appreciate the consequences that moving two processing and distribution centers for major cities will have on San Antonio, Corpus Christi, and McAllen mail operations, especially after the recent events in Houston. USPS is a lifeline for Texas communities, and any delay in mail delivery has consequences for our constituents and local economies,” the lawmakers continued.

The full letter can be found here.

Background on Congressman Castro’s Work to Protect Mail Delivery

In 2020, shortly after current U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took office, USPS began to implement controversial measures that delayed mail delivery and processing. After receiving complaints from his constituents about mail delays, Congressman Castro scheduled a visit to the main San Antonio post office to conduct congressional oversight. Ahead of Congressman Castro’s visit, as local news reported at the time, postal workers were ordered by their superiors in Washington to conceal between 30,000 and 54,000 pieces of delayed mail and obstruct Congressman Castro’s oversight.

In response to the challenge with mail delivery in San Antonio and across the country, Congressman Castro voted for the Delivering for America Act, a bill that would have provided $25 billion in funding to help USPS with the operational challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic while blocking major changes to postal operations that delay or diminish mail delivery. The Delivering for America Act passed the House of Representatives but failed to pass the Republican-controlled Senate. Two years later, with Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Congressman Castro voted to pass the Postal Service Reform Act, which requires USPS to maintain mail delivery six days a week and publish a weekly dashboard of performance data to help the public monitor service failures and identify mail slowdowns. President Joe Biden signed the Postal Service Reform Act into law in April 2022.

Despite the progress mandated by federal law, Congressman Castro and his colleagues have continued to receive complaints from their constituents about troubling new practices at USPS. In August 2023, after a Dallas USPS worker died from heatstroke, Congressman Castro and a group of San Antonio-area congressmen wrote to DeJoy to express their alarm about a sudden decision to stop providing water bottles to letter carriers during this summer’s historic heat wave. After congressional pressure, USPS agreed that letter carriers would not be punished if they stopped for cold water during their routes but refused to resume water bottle distribution. In October 2023, following additional constituent complaints, Congressman Castro released a letter he sent to the San Antonio headquarters of the United States Postal Service (USPS) demanding answers and accountability after USPS suddenly ended a longstanding policy of maintaining the cluster boxes that San Antonio neighborhoods rely on for safe and secure mail delivery.

Congressman Castro is committed to protecting federal mail operations. San Antonio neighborhoods who are facing issues with mail delivery are encouraged to get in touch with his office by calling 210-348-8216.