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The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said Friday it will issue a permit for a Mexican carrier to begin operations in the U.S. under the cross-border trucking program.

Allowing Mexican trucks to haul freight across the U.S. border does not pose the kind of “significant” truck-emissions issues that would require a full environmental impact study, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said.

It’s disappointing to see that the Department of Transportation’s own inspector general doesn’t think the agency is ready to proceed with the interminably delayed cross-border trucking pilot program with Mexico.

The Obama administration’s contentious cross-border trucking program with Mexico could be delayed until November after a Department of Transportation audit found that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has failed to set up several procedures aimed at monitoring and inspecting trucks that would enter the United States.

The Teamsters union and Public Citizen have filed a lawsuit against the Department of Transportation seeking to block the government’s plan to allow Mexican trucks back into the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported.

A federally funded program that retrofitted 76 trucks in Arizona with new $1,600 catalytic converters was terminated after public uproar that some of the money was being spent on Mexican carriers.

U.S. regulators and U.S. truckers who do business in Mexico said they are skeptical that Mexican carriers will participate in the cross-border trucking program in large numbers when the pilot project gets into full swing in the next 60 days.

Top transportation officials of the United States and Mexico last week signed an agreement that will allow Mexican trucks to carry freight beyond border commercial trade zones, which will in turn prompt Mexico to remove $2.4 billion in retaliatory tariffs it imposed on U.S. products.