30 August 2019
If you head east, past Dulzura and Barrett Junction and take the short spur to the south, you’ll find Tecate, one of three international ports of entry in San Diego County.
Tecate, Baja California is where the namesake beer comes from. When we were under 21, we’d make the trip to drink here when we needed a break from Tijuana. It’s a quiet town. It’s also the best place to cross to go climbing in the pseudo-secret Baja crag a few hours away. Tecate is sleepy and quaint. Always has been. It’s got charm.
In any given year, Tecate Port of Entry sees about 1.6 million cars & trucks and some 525,000 pedestrians come through the gates. This day (a Tuesday), I saw only fifteen or twenty vehicles go through, and a dozen or so pedestrians, in the thirty minutes I spent here.
Tecate, California USA is a Payless Kids, a small grocery and some places to buy Mexican auto insurance. It doesn’t have much else.
Eighteen miles to the west is the Otay Mesa Port of Entry Plaza. It’s the country’s third-busiest port of entry with Mexico and was built in 1983, primarily, to divert commercial truck traffic from the San Ysidro Port of Entry.
Last year, 8.3 million cars and trucks went through, along with 2.5 million pedestrians. Tijuana International Airport is here. A direct-access crossing for passengers boarding from The States was added, recently. Very convenient. Nearly eight million passengers flew through the airport in 2018.
From Tecate, it’d take a forty mile drive to get there–on roads. However, the Otay Truck Trail cuts almost twenty miles off the route and exits near the Port of Entry Plaza at Otay Mesa. Not quite two lanes wide in most parts, it’s a road cut that’s visible from miles away. It tracks up and over Otay Mountain and border agents use it to patrol and traverse between ports of entry. The views are great, and Trump’s The Wall Prototypes are still visible, as you descend west from the summit ridge. As usual, we passed several Border Patrol agents in SUVs and ATVs this day. They’ve never hassled us and, in the past, have let me shoot pictures and hang out as they conducted searches and detentions. This day, we just waved.
At Otay Mesa Port of Entry, commercial trucks and big rigs come through the border with regularity. Always. The pedestrian and passenger car part of the plaza, though, was largely vacant. Sporadically, pedestrians in small groups would enter, going south from north.
The secondary bays are where US agents send you if they suspect something illicit. It’s where your car will get a deep cavity search and you’ll get sweated under a bare bulb for a while. They can tear your car apart like a pit team, when they’re on the scent of something. Most of the bays were vacant, this day. Just two or three of them had vehicles being inspected at a slow pace.
#BorderCrisis
#CalmHere
#ImmigrationIsGood
