Otay Mesa Stories

Otay Mesa Stories

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Dept. of Homeland Security considers border entry fee

Money would make up for budget shortfall

A translation of a front-page headline on Baja’s daily El Mexicano on Tuesday, April 23, reads, "They Might Charge to Cross to the U.S.” beginning in 2014. The story was about the U.S. Department of ...

Cross-Border Campaigner

AMLO Calls Jaime Bonilla to Mexico

It’s been only a few months since controversial South Bay water board president Jaime Bonilla stepped down from the Otay Water District, but it’s easy to see that his former position is just a speck ...

Deficit Dollar Art

The U.S. government may be laden with debt, but that hasn’t kept the feds from looking for an artist to help ornament the soon-to-be completed Broadway courthouse downtown. “In addition to a new courthouse, the ...

Porn and Politicos

Downtown’s F Street X-rated bookstore has vacated its longtime premises in the Gaslamp Quarter on Fourth Avenue. The business got its start just around the corner on F Street in the 1970s, in a narrow ...

Outside on the Night Shift

"Basically,” says Aaron Meleen, a deputy sheriff traffic investigator working the night shift in Poway, “we don’t have much going on right now.” It’s a Monday evening, the onset of his 12½-hour shift, and we’re ...

Brawley's Ex-Mayor Is New Warden at Donovan

The ex-mayor of Brawley, Daniel Paramo, has been appointed acting warden at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa. A San Diego State University graduate and a former Brawley city councilman, Paramo has ...

Lobbyists Hired for Sam Zell's Otay-Tijuana Border Complex

The former district director for ex-Democratic state senator Denise Ducheny has turned up as a new lobbyist for billionaire Sam Zell’s Otay Mesa border crossing complex, planned to connect Tijuana’s airport with the United States. ...

Rezoning By Ballot and What Voters Don’t Know

Almost no information is available to voters about Proposition A. The East Otay Mesa Recycling Collection Center and Landfill Ordinance, a countywide proposition on the June 8 ballot, requires a simple majority to pass. Aside ...

Synchronized Smugglers?

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers working at the three ports of entry in San Diego County seized over 5000 pounds of marijuana valued at 3.2 million dollars on Thursday afternoon, January 28. According to ...

Something's Rotten in Secondary

The evidence was hidden in a cargo of fish, but authorities at the Otay Mesa border crossing sniffed out 708 pounds of marijuana anyway. According to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release, the ...

Obama taps Alan Bersin to oversee the border

There is the curbside view of the Mexican border: severed heads on nightclub floors, migrant corpses in the mountains, fingers lopped off, armies in pursuit of drug lords, fleeing fugitives, gangs of money-washers, set to ...

An Execution in the Hills

MISSION HILLS An Execution in the HillsBy Scafidi, March 24 “Hello, Zack. What’s up?” “Uh, hi, uh, Fred? It’s me, Zack.” “Yup.” “My cat’s got a gopher cornered over here. Can you come quick? And ...

13 Miles of Metal

Border Patrol agent Richard Gonzales pushes a button in the shiny white Chevy Tahoe he’s driving. In response, a gate rolls open to allow entry to the no-man’s-land between the secondary fence and the old ...

That Dog Will Manhunt

On March 17 at 4:05 p.m., an SDPD helicopter circled the neighborhood at I-5 and Tocayo Avenue. Police announced over their P.A. system that they were in pursuit of a suspect described as a black ...

For the Children

On March 5, the South Bay Union School District voted to eliminate 80 teaching positions, but it was not the slam-dunk many expected. District superintendent Carol Parish addressed those attending, saying, “We had to start ...

Go Directly to Jail...and Die

Francisco Castaneda came to the United States from El Salvador during its civil war of the 1980s. Fleeing the violence, his mother crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 1982 with Francisco, aged 10, and his ...

The Border Wait, and Wait, and Wait

When it comes to crossing the border, Carlos Hermosillo plays it by ear. As he gets close to the San Ysidro crossing, he calls 700-7000 on his cell phone, and a recording gives him the ...

Illegal Ways to Avoid the Border Wait

They’re still building roads out on Otay Mesa, about three miles north of the international border. The hot tar takes longer to set in the incredible heat. The smell hangs thick over the brown hillsides ...

Don't Ask, Just Pay

Ever wonder why public works cost taxpayers so much? Consider the case of one small project, the new Otay Valley Regional Park ranger station and restroom. Under a joint powers agreement among San Diego County, ...

In the lobby

With election results now in hand, members of the city’s lobbying corps can adjust their strategies as needed. And despite the threatened economic recession and housing crash, there’s plenty of business, judging from recent disclosure ...

Not in the lobby

An engineer from Burlingame, California, has been told by the City of San Diego’s Ethics Commission that he doesn’t have to register as a lobbyist if he provides only “technical data” to city officials. “If ...

Big War Chest, No War

Some people divine the future in tea leaves, others in pork bellies. Campaign contributions are also a way of seeing what is on the horizon. Greg Cox has been a San Diego County supervisor since ...

Mystery meat

Some San Diego city hall insiders are expecting the investigation announced this week by Mayor Jerry Sanders of that controversial Otay Mesa Blackwater training facility to be a whitewash. Exhibit number one, they argue, is ...

Tacos Are a Tiny Taste of Temptation

Fancy wimmen are okay, but there's nuttin' like the real thing: a nice warm adobada taco on a nice cold night beside a nice hot grill outside a friendly taco catering truck, with that marinated ...

When Developers Seize Planning

What is it about Sunroad Enterprises and regional airports? During the same period in which certain City planners were plotting to use Sunroad's defiance of federal and state air safety laws as a pretext to ...

Commitment

Robert Hernandez presides over a psychological war zone. At Donovan correctional facility, where Hernandez is warden, every move his officers make is watched by inmates; every word they say is overheard. "Nothing," said one officer, ...

Otay Dreams

In 1954 I sat on the school bus every day next to my best friend, Mark Robson. The ride home from Montgomery Elementary School in Otay was a straight shot east on Main Street. The ...

Caged

Finding yourself in jail or prison for the first time unlatches a simple conundrum: you can’t know what you’re about to face because, had you known, you might have avoided the crime, or at least ...

Crime Eats

Special religious diets in San Diego County's jails sometimes make prisoners who receive regular fare feel shortchanged. How else can you explain why several men in the system, who said they were white supremacists, once ...

Traverse border-hugging Otay Mountain -- by truck, bike, or foot -- and chat with a Border Patrol agent.

Rising like a rumpled pillow from the eastern extremity of Otay Mesa, Otay Mountain offers unparalleled, integrated views of the bifurcated San Diego-Tijuana metropolis, the Coronado Islands, Point Loma, and San Diego Bay. Seen on ...

Promise Breakers

How long is forever? As it turns out, forever is about two years, or so people in Chula Vista were recently surprised to discover. In March 1996, the County of San Diego and the City ...

Best of 2000: Best Auto-Wrecking Yard

Ecology Auto Wrecking 1180 Heritage Road, Otay Mesa (619) 661-4538 Over 50 auto-wrecking yards do business in San Diego. Most are located close to the border and specialize in two or three makes. For their ...

Best of 2000: Best Skydiving

Air Adventures Skydiving Inc. 1590 Continental Street, Otay Mesa (800) 992-7003 www.airadventures.com Most Air Adventures customers say they've never flung themselves from a plane at 13,000 feet and are seeking a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. Tandem leaps ...

Bonita's First Blood

When the kids get off the trolley at San Ysidro these spring evenings, you sense the bravado. With so much news about murders, cartels, allegations of government corruption, it's impossible to think about Tijuana the ...

The Drug Dealer and the Real Estate Men

Cocaine and real estate often go together in San Diego, especially along the dusty strip of border land known as Otay Mesa. Some of the district's biggest land deals were financed by drug money. One ...

Doing the Mexican Mailbox Jam

'Hi gang! Having a wonderful time in Tijuana. Wish you were here. Write back soon." I address the postcard, a view of the Jai Alai Fronton Palace on Revolución to myself in San Diego. I ...

Checkpoint Otay

At the east end of Otay Mesa, where the business parks and trucking yards give way to open grassland, stands the California Highway Patrol's Otay Mesa Truck Inspection Facility. It's a sort of nouveau-industrial building ...

Polly Wants a High Bid

Parrots are like drugs. People crave them. People smuggle them. The government tries to stop it, but smugglers are smart, and people demand parrots. After drugs, people make more money smuggling wildlife across the U.S. ...