Alexandra Mendoza | San Diego Union-Tribune En Español
TIJUANA — Months into an ongoing increase in migrant border crossings — which have left hundreds of migrants on any given day unsheltered in San Diego County and strained local humanitarian resources — Mexican authorities have stepped up enforcement in an effort to deter passage into the United States.
Just south of the border wall in San Ysidro, Mexican officials have installed a chain link fence reinforced with razor wire at the top and bottom that prevents entry to a section of the Tijuana River channel, identified as one of the main points for migrants crossing into San Diego.
Behind the barrier, Mexican National Guard and immigration agents keep watch at all times.
Since its installation last month, the number of migrants crossing in that area has decreased. However, it has increased in others spots farther east, such as Jacumé in Tecate, just south of the border from Jacumba Hot Springs, according to Mexican officials. As a result, Mexican federal agents have increased their presence there, as well.
Immigration-rights advocates expressed concern over the new fence, arguing it forces people to seek more dangerous ways to reach the U.S. to seek asylum.
Mexican officials said the new fence is partly to keep people out of an active construction zone. It is located next to the canal where work is currently being carried out day and night to build an elevated highway to connect Playas de Tijuana with the Tijuana airport.
The fence was set up by Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense, the department in charge of the project, which is expected to be completed next year before the end of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term in office.
Some videos released in recent months show groups of dozens of people running along International Avenue toward the canal in their attempt to reach the United States.
A banner with a message in Spanish that has been posted to the south side of the secondary U.S.-Mexico border fence warns that crossing the canal is illegal and urges migrants to apply for asylum screening through the CBP One mobile app’s appointment system.
David Pérez Tejada, director of the National Migration Institute in Baja California said that the new fence is for “safety and to prevent accidents.”
“And on the other hand, also as an inhibitor for people entering the Tijuana River channel,” added Pérez Tejada, who said “we had to act in a situation like this.”
Pérez Tejada said that the area has seen mass crossings of up to 280 people.
Last month a man died after crossing the border through the channel with a large group of people.
Adriana Jasso, a human rights advocate with the American Friends and Services Committee in San Diego, confirmed a “notable decrease” in crossings in the Tijuana River channel area, although she reiterated that they continue on other parts of the border.
Pérez Tejada said that in one day up to 800 people have crossed through Jacumé. From there, they stop over at one of a few makeshift encampments in the Jacumba Hot Springs area, where they wait for sometimes days for Border Patrol to pick them up for processing.
On Friday morning, a group of migrants from Ecuador walked into one of the camps located off Interstate 8, joining more than 40 others who had arrived roughly an hour earlier.
They used trash and nearby vegetation to build fires and settled into unoccupied tents left by a group from the night before. Border Patrol agents sat in parked cars nearby.
For Maria Doris Campos Pardo — who traveled from Colombia with her son and nephew and stood holding her duffel bag near the front of the camp — the long journey was necessary. Her family left Colombia due to violence, including the death of her daughter, and she says that it was too dangerous to stay.
“I’m not going to look for support there,” Pardo said in Spanish, adding that she constantly felt fear in her home country. “So here I am.”
At one makeshift camp between the primary and secondary border fences near San Ysidro a month ago, an average of 100 to 120 people a day were receiving help.
On Monday, Jasso, who has been one of the volunteers providing humanitarian aid to migrants, noted that there were an average of 40 people — many of them children.
“(The fence) may slow the flow temporarily. However, what we are seeing is that people are going to try from other locations,” Jasso said.
Jasso noted that in the past week she has heard of at least two cases of falls or serious injuries of migrants — including a mother and a small child — who climbed a section of the U.S-Mexico border wall.
UC San Diego Health said it is currently on pace to care for more than 360 people who were injured after falling from the San Diego border wall this year.
“In 2018 we had less than a dozen patients falling off the wall with serious injuries. Now it’s at least two a day,” said Dr. Jay Doucet, chief of trauma at UC San Diego Health.
Common injuries include pelvic fractures, contusions and severe brain injuries, said Doucet. Two-thirds of the patients are Mexican nationals; the rest hail from all over the world.
UC San Diego Health also reported that more women are being hospitalized from border falls. “In 2019, less than a quarter of admissions were women. In 2023 almost half of the patients sustaining falls at the border have been women.”
Mexican officials said they are going after criminal groups dedicated to smuggling people across the border.
“We are doing patrolling and intelligence work to be able to find those groups that are smuggling people,” Pérez Tejada said.
A week ago, a 13-year-old boy from Mexico died after a vehicle believed to be involved in human smuggling overturned in Jacumé.
Chief Patrol Agent Patricia McGurk-Daniel, head of U.S. Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector, posted a video on her X account Thursday showing a group of 75 people “guided by callous smugglers over the border wall” near San Ysidro.
“Criminal organizations continue to use people as pawns by placing them into dangerous situations as a means of pulling Border Patrol resources away from our law enforcement mission,” she said.
The increase in migrant crossings led U.S. officials to close — once again — the PedWest border crossing this weekend in order to allocate more resources to migrant processing.
Mexican officials have defended the installation of the new fence in Tijuana. In a statement last month, Enrique Lucero, head of Tijuana’s Migrant Affairs Office, said the new fence did not violate migrants’ right to request asylum “since this point is not a legal port of entry to request asylum.”
Lucero said there will be more outreach efforts to encourage migrants to apply for asylum screenings through CBP One — currently the only way the U.S. is allowing migrants to request protection.
But migrants and migrant advocates have reported numerous problems with the app.
“(The app) has a lot of complications, and people wait up to six months for an appointment,” said Soraya Vázquez, deputy director of the binational legal services organization Al Otro Lado.
“It’s obvious that people are going to try to cross wherever they can, and no wall is going to stop them.”
Staff writer Maura Fox contributed to this story.