Corvallis City Councilor Mike Beilstein was stopped at the border of Texas and Mexico on Thursday morning along with other members of Pastors for Peace who were attempting to cross into Mexico on their way to Cuba.

Beilstein left his Corvallis home June 17 to join a caravan headed to Cuba. It is Beilstein’s third trip with Pastors for Peace, an organization that has been challenging the United States blockade of Cuba for the past 19 years. Each year a “Friendshipment Caravan” attempts to cross the U.S. border into Mexico with the intention of traveling to Cuba to deliver medicine, educational supplies, computers and school buses to the country. The caravan does not obtain U.S. Treasury Department licenses to deliver the humanitarian aid, making the trip illegal.

According to Beilstein, who called on his cell phone from the border crossing, U.S. customs officials stopped the caravan and searched three of the 11 vehicles, which are loaded with medical supplies and computer equipment that will be distributed in Cuba. About 30 computers were removed from the three vehicles by customs before the caravan was allowed to continue.

The computers were intended for classrooms and medical clinics and hospitals in Cuba.

After the computers were taken, “We staged a protest and shut down the border crossing for half an hour,” Beilstein said, but then the group decided their time was better spent getting the remaining supplies across the border.

At last contact, Beilstein and the others were being processed on the Mexican side of the border, which can take up to a day, as every box from every vehicle is removed and inspected and then retaped and placed back on the buses. Once allowed through, the caravan will make its way to Tampico, Mexico, where the buses and aid will be loaded onto a Cuban cargo ship. The caravanistas themselves will fly to Havana from Tampico.

Local activist Juanita Rodriguez did not participate in this year’s caravan but has in years past. She is keeping close tabs on the caravan’s progress. In 2005, she said, customs officials took all the computers they’d been attempting to carry across the border, and those computers eventually were donated to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

In 2006 and 2007, she said, although the caravan was stopped, no items had been confiscated.

“What bothers me is how arbitrary this all is,” she said. “The pattern is very irregular. Sometimes they push you through with no problem.”