Del Rio News Herald

CIUDAD ACUNA – After a standoff that lasted about nine hours, federal customs officials here returned a diesel pickup truck they had seized from Del Rioans Andy and Bobby McCulley earlier in the day.

Customs officials would not discuss the incident by telephone and were unavailable for interview Thursday night at the Acuña site.

The McCulleys waited for hours outside the customs office here, telephoning friends and business colleagues in Mexico and the United States for help in getting their truck back.

Andy McCulley said this morning the truck was finally returned about 10:30 p.m. Thursday.

The McCulleys’ 2006 GMC four-door pickup was seized about 1:30 p.m. Thursday as the couple was returning to Del Rio after eating lunch, shopping and buying diesel fuel in Acuña.

Bobby McCulley, a ranch real estate broker and rancher in Val Verde County, said Mexico customs officers asked him as he was leaving Acuña if he had purchased any diesel fuel while he was in Mexico.

“I told him, ‘Yes, sir,’ and he told me that it’s the law that you could only bring back so much diesel, and that that’s always been the law, and I told him I’ve been coming over here for 30-some-odd years, and I’ve never heard of that law,” Bobby McCulley said Thursday night.

McCulley said when he asked to see the law in writing, the customs officials refused to produce it.

“The government sells us this gas, then the government wants to take it away. It’s cowboy logic,” Bobby McCulley said.

Andy McCulley, who works as a property manager, said she and her husband were ordered out of their truck and told that it would be returned to them in two weeks after tests were run on the diesel siphoned from the truck’s regular tank and from its after-market auxiliary tank to determine if the fuel had been purchased in Mexico.

Bobby McCulley theorized that customs officials here began seizing some diesel trucks with Texas license plates and auxiliary diesel tanks when Texans began coming here in ever-increasing numbers to buy diesel that sells here at about $2.20 per gallon.

McCulley also said he is aware that many U.S. citizens buy hundreds of gallons of diesel at a time for illicit resale in Del Rio.

But McCulley insisted that the diesel he purchased, both for the tank in his truck and in his 50-gallon auxiliary tank, is for personal use.

The standoff began when the McCulleys, unlike a number of other Texans whose trucks have been quietly confiscated in the past week or so, refused to leave Mexico without their vehicle.

“I’m not going to leave without my truck. Now it’s a matter of principle. I’m adamant, and they’re adamant, so here we are,” said Andy McCulley.

The operators of several of Acuña’s Pemex gas stations and state and local tourism officials joined the McCulleys at the customs offices here in an attempt to convince officials to return the McCulleys’ truck.

The McCulleys also complained that there is no sign at any of the city’s gas stations warning U.S. truck owners that it is illegal to export Mexico diesel in an auxiliary tank, a fact verified by gas station owners here.

“I don’t break the law intentionally,” Andy McCulley said “But I think that the officials here should tell the residents of their sister city of Del Rio what they are doing.”

Eduardo Ramon, a former mayor of Acuña and now a representative of the state of Coahuila tourism office, worried aloud Thursday night about the effect the incident will have on an already-depressed tourism picture.

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