San Ysidro Stories

San Ysidro Stories

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Tijuana curio shops struggle to stay in business

Movement to stock “higher quality” products

The once-booming curio business on Tijuana's Avenida Revolución has dwindled to a trickle as the tastes of tourists who still visit what was once known as "the most traveled avenue in the world" have shifted, ...

The San Ysidro Port of Entry reconstruction plan

Entry lanes to nearly double

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) held a meeting at Casa Familiar’s arts and cultural center in San Ysidro on Thursday, May 9, to display plans for a massive reconstruction of the San Ysidro Port ...

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 ...

San Ysidro soon to have transportation center?

Grand scale, hands-on, model-making meeting

Over 60 community members gathered at the San Ysidro Civic Center on Thursday, April 18, to let their voices be heard about the potential building of a world-class “intermodal transportation center” at the San Ysidro ...

What the sequester means for the border

Mostly bad news

“April is the cruelest month…”, begins the first line of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land,” perhaps more aptly retitled “The Wait Land” for the border region. This April, federal budgetary squabbles and sequestration cuts ...

Baja California economy suffers for lack of northern visitors

Border waits partly to blame

Baja California residents spend three times more money in the U.S. than do Americans visiting south of the border, according to Armando Rogelio Lara Valle, the director of Baja California's planning and development committee. According ...

Controversial killings protested in San Ysidro

“Investigation” continues three years later

A group of about 250 demonstrators at the San Ysidro Port of Entry called for justice and transparency on Saturday, February 23. The loud and peaceful protesters, including the families of three people killed by ...

Mexican men rescued from San Ysidro sewer pipe

Trapped for more than 12 hours

Four illegal immigrants were rescued from a sewage filled pipe by San Diego Fire and Rescue on the night of Wednesday, February 13. Afterward, the men were hosed off and handed over to Customs and ...

Long Lines at San Ysidro Border Crossing

Seasonal congestion and construction in progress

Long lines and long waits appear to be the daily order at the border this holiday season. Earlier this week, pedestrians stretched back a quarter of a mile; those waiting to cross in cars went ...

New pedestrian inspection station soon at Tijuana border 

New rectangular columns of steel rebar sprout into space from a plot of land on the Mexican side of the border at San Ysidro. The columns, easily reaching the height of the multistoried office building ...

Baby Saved at San Ysidro Border

Border Patrol to the rescue

On Tuesday morning, November 27, at about 6:30, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents at the San Ysidro border crossing helped save the life of a month-old baby who appeared to be suffering from serious ...

Video Feed: Opening Day at El Chaparral Border Crossing

Mexico's El Chaparral border crossing station opened its 22 gates to the full flow of Mexico-bound traffic on Friday, November 1. Traffic jams lasted for hours. These videos, shot from different vantage points on the ...

Mexico's New Border Crossing Fails Grand Opening

The newly opened border-crossing facility dubbed El Chaparral opened its 22 gates to the full flow of Mexico-bound vehicle traffic on Friday, November 1, and motorists were forced to endure “embotellamientos” (traffic jams) in various ...

Say Hi to New Turnstiles at U.S.-Mexico Border Crossing

The new way to walk into Mexico via the San Ysidro route turns out to be pretty simple if one just follows instructions. No less than six bilingual women wearing red, short-sleeved polo shirts are ...

Mystery Road Poured at U.S.-Mexico Border

Whether it will be used as a traffic route or just a utility road between the old Mexican border station and the new one (now under construction) is open to conjecture, but a new road ...

New Borderline Road to Aid Patrols Near Goat Canyon

The U.S. Border Patrol recently finished pouring concrete on an extraordinary road that's less than a half mile long but is so steep and twisty that it couldn't be built by private contractors. The road ...

Tijuana Wastewater Cleaner Than San Diego’s

For the first time since it was built in 1997, the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant at the U.S.-Mexico border has met the standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency three months in a ...

Solar Power Company Sues San Ysidro School District

President Obama’s 2008 election brought money and emphasis to alternative energy in the United States. For some former lobbyists and politicians, this emphasis became an entrepreneurial opportunity. A 2009 article in the Sacramento Business Journal ...

No Road Yet to Tijuana's New Border Station

Mexico and the United States appear to be in a race to see who can erect their new respective border ports first. Both sides have been constructing at a feverish pace. The U.S. border station ...

Worse Traffic Delays May Precede Border Crossing Openings

According to Tijuana’s daily Frontera, lack of binational coordination and U.S. budgetary bottlenecks could make the effort to ease border-crossing times a spectacular failure — a fracaso, as one Mexican official put it. Although efforts ...

Sweetwater's Funds for Education

Last week, Sweetwater’s interim superintendent Ed Brand suspended the Funds for Education Committee, saying, “I can stop the grief right here.” This is the second time Brand’s private-sector fund-raising efforts have ended in controversy. Brand ...

Borderline Tours

Mike Harris drives his blue Ford Ranger pickup south on Hollister Street, through the Tijuana River Valley, toward the border. He stops the truck on the shoulder and calls the Border Patrol to tell a ...

The Only Way to Walk Across the Border in Five Minutes

It is with some reluctance that I write about my recent acquisition of the SENTRI border-crossing card because, well, I got a good thing going. After years of standing for hours in that long, sinuous ...

Shot in Tijuana: At the Border

The large column in the foreground is part of the reconstruction of the San Ysidro border-crossing station. Its length seems to increase every day as steelworkers and welders work on it. Whether it will be ...

The Sweetwater School Board Hits the Canvas Again

"The honeymoon might be over,” acknowledged Dr. Edward Brand, interim superintendent for Sweetwater Union High School District. Knee-deep in scandal, the Sweetwater school board on June 21 fired Superintendent Jesus Gandara. On June 22, Brand ...

The Tyranny of Those Tests

"Teachers have an analogy for all the testing that we are required to do,” says Melanie Morton, a Sweetwater Union High School District teacher. “You don’t lose weight if you just keep stepping on the ...

Details on San Ysidro Border Scaffolding Collapse

A collapse of scaffolding placed around the old pedestrian bridge at the San Ysidro border crossing closed the crossing for more than 12 hours on September 14, the longest period of time in 30 years. ...

Gantry Crane Brought In to Disassemble Border Station

An enormous gantry crane recently erected at the U.S. Border Station in San Ysidro, hovered above the U.S. landmark in order to begin the precision disassembly of the old 1972 Nixon-era structure in such a ...

A Bridge Not Yet Far Enough

The new northern-most vehicle bridge, a key segment in Tijuana’s masterplan to expedite border inbound and outbound commuter traffic, is slowly taking shape just south off the ancient pedestrian bridge that crosses the Tijuana River. ...

Field of Cell Phone Tower Beams

Is the Sweetwater Union High School District playing roulette with students’ health? The district has signed lucrative contracts with communication companies that allow them to place 32 cell phone towers on campuses throughout the southernmost ...

San Ysidro Port of Entry Tumbles as Reconstruction Begins

Crossing over the new pedestrian bridge in San Ysidro, the observer can see the beginning of the end, the razing of the current United States Port of Entry, which will be replaced with a new ...

Two U.S. Citizens Shot While Waiting at Border

On April 4 at about 2:30 a.m., motorists at the San Ysidro port of entry were shocked to see two male U.S. citizens shot to death as they waited in line to cross the border. ...

San Ysidro Is Too Far South for Sidewalks

Juan Mariscal rests a hand on the new walker he started using two days ago. In November, doctors amputated the 64-year-old man’s right leg because of complications from diabetes. During the next three months, as ...

New Border Pedestrian Bridge to Open Soon

The new pedestrian bridge that crosses over the I-5 freeway in San Ysidro is scheduled to open this spring. From all appearances, it is ready to open now. In the wee hours of the night, ...

Women Beat Border-Crosser with Burritos

Three women attacked a 32-year-old man inside the U.S. border-crossing building at 3:30 a.m. on February 25. A little earlier, this reporter passed a group of three screeching, belligerent women buying what appeared to be ...

Trolley Pass Black Market Pops Up at Border

Since our local Metropolitan Transit System changed the trolley fares and how the bus and trolley transfers worked in 2009, riding the trolley has become very expensive. Before with a trolley ticket or a bus ...

Metropolitan Transit System to Work on Trolley Line From San Ysidro Northward

Blue Line trolley service from the San Ysidro station to points north has been halted on weekends so the Metropolitan Transit System can rebuild sections of track and station platforms to accommodate the more modern ...

Bridges to Bargains

The new east-west pedestrian bridge being constructed at the San Ysidro border crossing is rising rapidly from its formerly inchoate state. Since a pile-driver pounded piers into the ground a few months back, it’s been ...

He Wasn't Resisting

The San Diego American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has blasted media coverage of the May 28 death of Anastacio Hernández Rojas following a tasering and alleged beating by U.S. Border Patrol agents at the San ...

Fright Wedding

A man of Somali-descent pleaded guilty in a Minnesota federal court on May 2 to charges of making false statements to federal investigators due to his involvement in transporting suspected terrorists to San Diego and ...

Weedy Wheels

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers arrested an American teenager on Wednesday, February 17, when he attempted to smuggle marijuana into the U.S. At about 3:00 p.m., the 18-year-old male, who is also a resident ...

Breeding, Fighting, Dying

A pickup heading southbound to Mexico on Monday, January 11, had a compartment concealed under the truck’s bed that was filled with more than 40 game birds. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers detected the ...

Dregs Net

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the San Ysidro port of entry arrested five wanted fugitives between 6:00 a.m. Sunday and 6:00 a.m. Monday, November 23. Included in the roundup was a man wanted ...

Eye-Eye-Eye on Guns

Downtown merchants and restaurant owners held a press conference at the Hotel Nelson in Tijuana on Monday, July 20, to voice their apprehensions about the installation of new traffic-monitoring equipment being installed at the San ...

Trolley on the Fritz

The Blue Line trolley came to a stop Friday morning, July 3, after an overhead power line broke somewhere between Palm Avenue and H Street, according to a transit police officer. North- and south-bound passengers ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Salmonella Salsa

I received word about a few parties down south on a Friday that I was to drive up to L.A. I decided that I’d hit them both before the long drive. The first was for ...

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 ...

The Sarcastic Killer

A boy 3-1/2 months old was the youngest homicide victim in San Diego County during the first half of 2007. The oldest was a 75-year-old woman. Both were killed by family members, allegedly, the infant ...

Bloody Mess

PolyHeme, that controversial blood substitute deployed in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods during trials conducted by UCSD three years ago, has come a cropper. Evanston, Illinois-based Northfield Laboratories announced on May 23 that of ...