Campaign rhetoric around US-Mexico border is extreme. Living there is a lot more nuanced

SAN DIEGO — For any American who has paid even the slightest attention in the run-up to November’s general election, the rhetoric around the U.S.-Mexico border has been almost impossible to avoid.

Former President Donald Trump has vowed to “seal the border and stop the migrant invasion,” has previously referred to migrants as “animals” and last Thursday compared the U.S. to the “garbage can of the world” because of illegal border crossings.

While Vice President Kamala Harris hasn’t adopted the same dehumanizing language as her opponent, she has moved toward a more conservative stance on the border, including promising an even tougher crackdown on asylum seekers than one implemented by the Biden administration earlier this year.

Despite the difference in tone, the message from both major political parties is that there is a crisis at the border.

But what is it actually like to live near the border? In recent weeks, the Union-Tribune spoke with more than two dozen San Diego County residents who live closest to the international boundary, including an expectant mother, retired police officers, military veterans and business owners. Some support Trump, others will go for Harris. They live all along the border, from San Ysidro and Otay Mesa in the densely populated western portion of the county, to the rural East County mountain and desert towns of Potrero, Campo and Jacumba Hot Springs.

The verdict is far from unanimous on whether a crisis is unfolding in their backyards, or if it is the same crisis politicians are talking about in Washington.

“Sometimes people think it’s very high crime … but look at it, this our life,” said Luis Haro, a 57-year-old Uber driver and glass worker, as he motioned to the large homes and well-manicured lawns in his San Ysidro neighborhood located just steps from a secondary border fence. “We have lived peaceful here, other than the smell and the long waits at the border whenever you want to go eat some tacos.”

While many say the border has little effect on their daily lives, a few agree that there is an immigration crisis. Many residents in backcountry stretches along the border regularly see migrants crossing through. Others, like Haro, point to the stench of the badly polluted Tijuana River as their biggest concern.

Then there are those who experience the border as a thing they are crossing often, to see family in Mexico, to get affordable health care. For them, long wait times at ports of entry are a quality-of-life issue.

Darlene Bryant, a retired San Diego police service officer, lives about a mile and a half from the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Campo, next to railroad tracks that she said migrants regularly follow. She saw migrants crossing her property just three nights before she spoke with a reporter.

“They leave messes on the property, human feces and garbage, and it’s upsetting, it’s upsetting to your dogs and stuff like that, because it sets them off during the night,” said Bryant, 62, who has lived for 26 years on the property. “It’s a lot different when it’s your backyard.”

Bryant said she feels for people “living in oppression or under threat,” and as a military veteran can appreciate difficulties in other parts of the world. “But there’s a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things,” she said.

But Bryant said border issues are not necessarily driving her vote. She’s voting against Trump, for other reasons.

‘They used to hide’

While some migrants still try to avoid Border Patrol to enter the country illegally, residents have noticed a shift in recent years. Lance Garmo, 42, lives in Jamul but runs a family-owned grocery store in Campo. On his daily commute, he often passes migrants waiting to be picked up for processing by federal agents. He recalled a time recently when someone went to his store and asked him to call the Border Patrol for them.

“It used to be the opposite,” he said. “They used to hide from Border Patrol.”

About 20 miles to the east of Campo and its 2,955 residents sits Jacumba Hot Springs, population 540. Last year there, amid a huge spike in asylum claims, Border Patrol set up an open-air detention site for those who had crossed the border and then surrendered to agents. Volunteers, including some local Jacumba residents, sheltered the asylum seekers in an encampment just south of Interstate 8 as they waited to be processed by the government.

The rise in this style of crossing is partly attributed to a major change in how migrants can apply for asylum screening — through a cellphone app rather than just presenting themselves at a port of entry. But the wait for appointments can be long, sometimes up to nine months, according to a recent study, prompting many people to seek asylum by crossing away from ports of entry and immediately surrendering to Border Patrol.

In fiscal 2021, the San Diego Border Patrol sector recorded 142,459 migrant encounters between ports of entry. By fiscal year 2024, which ended Sept. 30, encounters had jumped to 324,260. But migrant apprehensions along the Southwest border have been in decline since June, when the Biden administration implemented the executive order restricting asylum and imposed stricter consequences for those who cross without authorization. In the San Diego Sector, which has been the busiest along the entire Southwest border for months, encounters dropped by 48% from June to September.

The crossings have “definitely slowed down” in recent months, Jacumba resident Pete Cerep said. “But it’s still happening, for sure.”

Cerep, a 37-year-old who runs his own website and works in waste management, said he moved to his property next to the border fence in March 2023 because it was affordable and good for his dogs. He has collected makeshift rebar ladders that people have used to climb over the 30-foot wall.

Cerep plans to vote for Trump, hoping that he’ll fulfill his promises to secure the border — Cerep thinks more barriers and more personnel are needed — and conduct mass deportations. “Hopefully he’s going to deport all the people who have crossed in the last two years,” Cerep said.

Jeffrey Heck, a retiree who has long owned property in Jacumba and moved there permanently five years ago, occasionally offers tours for those who want to see the border. Better known in the tightknit community as “Coyote,” the 67-year-old tows a boat behind his van that visitors can board. Heck said that on his tours he’s seen people cross on ladders, and at least one time they even helped a group so they didn’t fall and get hurt on the way down.

‘They don’t come to cause problems’

To the west, longtime San Ysidro residents say it’s been decades since undocumented migrants have passed through their neighborhoods. One retiree who has lived for 40 years in a home about 2 miles from the border said his cul-de-sac used to be a “standard smuggling point” for migrants awaiting rides after just crossing, but he estimated that ended in the mid-to-late 1980s.

Ed Adame, whose wife was a non-uniformed administrator with the Border Patrol, lives about as close as one possibly can to the border. His San Ysidro neighborhood, just west of the Las Americas outlet mall, sits about 100 feet from the secondary fence, separated by a roadway and an 8-foot wall at the end of his cul-de-sac. The 61-year-old Navy veteran who recently retired from a federal government job is the original owner of his home, which was built in 2000 along with the other homes in the subdivision. He said undocumented migrants used to pass through the neighborhood with some frequency, though he estimated it’s been at least a decade since any have come through.

There was the time, he recalled with a laugh, when he said a man tried unsuccessfully to avoid Border Patrol agents by blending into a neighbor’s backyard birthday party, or the time another neighbor opened her trash can lid early one morning and screamed when she found a migrant inside hiding out from agents.

Adame said he never felt threatened by the people he saw, and he feels conflicted about the issue because he understands that migrants are people “seeking for a better way of life.” He believes people should be able to come to the U.S. but should present themselves at ports of entry. “I equate it to, if I have a guest in my home, I invite you to the front door, I’m not going to invite you to climb through my window,” he said.

Adame already voted early for Harris, but said it had nothing to do with her stance on immigration or the border — he prefers her economic policies.

Four of Adame’s neighbors in the same subdivision said they, too, will vote for Harris.

Maria Cruz, a 53-year-old Mexican citizen with resident status in the U.S., lives in San Ysidro about 2 miles from the border. “Here in San Ysidro, there’s no problem … there’s nothing dangerous,” the stay-at-home grandmother said in Spanish. “The undocumented people, the only thing they do in this country … is work. They work. They don’t come to cause problems, they don’t cause problems.”

Cruz lives just blocks from the Iris Avenue Transit Center in Otay Mesa West, which became a de-facto migrant welcome center at times over the past year as Border Patrol dropped off hundreds of recently processed asylum seekers each day. She said it’s been two or three months since Border Patrol stopped regularly unloading huge groups of migrants there, but even when that was a daily occurrence, it didn’t affect nearby residents.

“There were no fights or nothing,” Cruz said. “They arrived there and were just talking on their phones … communicating with their people, doing what they needed to do.”

The stink

For many San Ysidro and Otay Mesa residents, the first issue that comes to mind at the mention of the border is not migration but the terrible smell of the Tijuana River.

Haro, the Uber driver and glass worker, has lived in the San Ysidro neighborhood near the border fence and outlet mall since 2010. He said the river has always put off a strong odor during the hottest summer months.

“But this year was horrible,” Haro said.

As he sprayed an ant killer outside of his home, Haro said he and other neighbors in the area couldn’t even open their windows anymore because of the stench.

Allan Bohol, 43, grew up in the South Bay and has lived in the area most of his life, currently in an Otay Mesa townhome complex that sits a little more than a mile from the border, just south of state Route 905 near San Ysidro High School. Asked an open-ended question about his thoughts when he hears politicians talk about the “crisis” at the border, Bohol immediately mentioned the Tijuana River.

“First of all, that smell,” Bohol said, adding that it doesn’t reek every day where he lives but can be “awful” at times. “Even if you close your window, it still kind of comes through.”

As a U.S. senator from California in 2019, Harris signed on to a letter urging the federal government to address the sewage runoff that pollutes the river and flows into the ocean in Imperial Beach. The previous year, California sued the Trump administration for failing to enforce the Clean Water Act. Nobody who spoke with the Union-Tribune expressed an opinion about which candidate, if any, might address the issue.

Wait times and other concerns

Many others who live close to Mexico worry little about immigration. Instead, they worry about how long it takes them to cross the border and other more common issues that plague neighborhoods across the county and elsewhere: homelessness, a lack of parking amid increased density, freeway noise and the construction of accessory dwelling units.

Esperanza García, 61, lives in Potrero just across the border from Tecate, where her husband is a pastor. The couple crosses into Tecate at least once a week. When asked if something should be addressed at a national level regarding the border, she did not hesitate: extend the hours of the Tecate Port of Entry, as she said the delays have increased.

Fellow Potrero resident Tulio Hernández, 26, also prioritized crossings and reflected on the perks of living so close to Tecate.

“Beneficial,” he said. “It’s easier for me to work here in the U.S. without being so far away from my other family in Mexico.”

Cruz, the San Ysidro grandmother, and her daughter, 28-year-old Mary Cruz, described a homeless encampment near their home as a far more serious safety concern than the thousands of migrants who had passed through the nearby Iris Avenue Transit Center.

Amaris Browne, an Otay Mesa resident and 35-year-old Navy wife expecting her first child, echoed that sentiment, saying homelessness was a much larger concern than immigration.

“(Politicians) are making it seem like people are just hopping the fence or crossing the water, and I’m sure (they are), but not as excessively as they’re making it seem,” said Browne, a Georgia native who used to drive for Uber and Lyft and frequently ferried Tijuana residents working or attending school in San Diego.

“These people are trying to go to work. Most of them are allowed to come over here … They’re not bothering anybody,” said Browne. “The most action I see is downtown with the homeless people. And they’re American, so there you go … Y’all worried about the wrong people.”

Browne, who has never voted in her life, said she dislikes Harris and might vote for Trump.