‘Devastating’ wait times at Mexico border strain California small businesses

Government agencies are spending billions of dollars to improve wait times at the U.S.-Mexico border, but the checkpoints remain severely clogged — and border communities are hurting.

In recent months lines at the border often stretched for several hours, frustrating more than 150,000 students, cross-border families, health care workers, small business owners, and others who daily cross to and from Mexico. Experts say some fronterizas have stopped crossing the border as often, and the loss of foot traffic in the region has resulted in heavy sales losses for small businesses.

“Money we can replace, but time will never come back. Those people are wasting their time in that line,” said Sunil Gakherja, 49, who owns a small perfume store in San Ysidro, a neighborhood in San Diego, close to the border.

U.S. border officials point to the need to shift resources to handle irregular migration — people who come into the United States in places other than official ports of entry, usually to seek asylum. San Diego surpassed Tucson this month as Border Patrol’s busiest sector in the nation.

But border-area residents and business leaders say the federal government should staff the border effectively so that the $741-million expansion of the San Ysidro Port of Entry has its intended impact, to reduce wait times and stimulate the regional economy.

Research published by the Atlantic Council says a 10-minute reduction in wait times could lead to an additional $26 million worth of cargo entering the United States each month and an annual impact of $5.4 million on the U.S. economy from purchases by families and individuals entering the United States from Mexico.

In the San Diego region, regular border crossers say wait times are going up, not down. Waits that used to last 30 minutes to an hour on weekdays can now regularly take three to four hours. On several days last December, pedestrians waited six hours or more. Adding to their frustration, long lines also stretch southbound to enter Mexico.

“Devastating” is how Kenia Zamarripa described the waits on both sides of the border. She is vice president of international and public affairs at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

“This is families losing their incomes,” she said. “There are 800 small businesses in San Ysidro that depend on pedestrian crossings and, again, 90% of their customers cross on foot.”

State officials said it’s unclear how much California has missed out on in sales tax revenue because that information can’t be broken down by zip code.

Small border businesses suffering

After opening in 2017, the El Rincon restaurant in San Ysidro faced the same challenges and growing pains many small, family-run businesses contend with, said Andrea Alaniz. Her mom owns the Mexican food restaurant along San Ysidro Boulevard, a few blocks from the border.

“We just opened the doors, and it was just us doing the cooking and waiting tables — hoping that business would increase and keep on a nice trend,” she recalled.

Word quickly spread of her mother’s caseros — homemade family recipes from Guadalajara, Jalisco. Lines would wrap around the tiny restaurant, with some customers even driving from Los Angeles or crossing north from Baja California, for the food.

“You know, the spices … you can find the spices anywhere, but really, it’s the way my mom and my family cooks,” said Alaniz. “My mom’s an amazing cook, and our recipes … they go way back.”

The whole family — five siblings — pitched in to handle the increased volume and their newfound success.

“We all work here,” laughed Alaniz. “It was a Sunday, and I remember we were all here, and the music was blaring, and we were just dancing and having fun and it was a really nice feeling.”

Then the pandemic hit. Federal officials restricted cross-border travel. Business tanked. About 200 businesses closed in San Ysidro, a working-class, mostly immigrant community of about 25,000 people, said Jason Wells, president of the local chamber of commerce.

“Shut their doors forever. Gone,” he said.

Alaniz and her family managed to stay open and even sent some money home to family in Mexico, but it was a daily fight. “We just don’t get the same amount of people coming in, because people aren’t going back and forth anymore,” said Alaniz.

Multiple studies show immigrants like Alaniz’s family were a key economic engine for the United States’ rebound from the pandemic. Some 50% of the labor market’s recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data.

Zamarripa says it’s these same border communities that lose about $2 billion yearly because of excessive border wait times. She worries the latest bottlenecks at checkpoints could severely impact those struggling to get back on their feet.

Gakherja, the owner of the perfumery, described a Sunday customer who waited six hours to cross the border.

“He got in the line at 9 in the morning, and he got here at 3:30 p.m. It’s too much. Imagine they have kids who have to go to the restroom. They need food. They’re not thinking about shopping after that,” said Gakherja.

Waiting is the hardest part

It’s not just small businesses that are hurting. Those hardest hit by backlogs at inefficient ports of entry include the region’s hospitality and hospital workers, students, medical patients, and anyone who relies on the interdependence of a cross-border region to offset the skyrocketing costs of living in San Diego, one of the most expensive cities in the nation.

Hector Urquiza, a 19-year-old college student serving in the Army Reserves, lives with his brother in Tijuana because rent is too expensive in San Diego.

“When I had to go to work, there was a two-hour line. It was like a snake, you know, wiggling around. That was kind of painful,” said Urquiza.

Cross-border travelers often turn to Facebook to document their experiences and wait times because the official Customs and Border Protection data is considered inaccurate and unreliable. Cómo está la línea Tijuana (How is the Tijuana line), a Facebook group with 430,000 members, was founded in June 2013 when its creator relied on the official CBP wait times and was extraordinarily late for work, according to his posts.

Urquiza said people who regularly cross the border develop a system. It sometimes includes holding a spot in line for each other to cut down on their day-to-day commute, but Tijuana authorities recently have cracked down on the practice, making it harder to get through the school or work week.

“Like you can tell somebody to save your spot, but when you try to go back to your spot, the police are like, ‘Nah, no amigo’,” he said.

When commuters wait in border traffic for hours, business productivity across Southern California suffers, say local leaders.

“As a business owner, you can’t expect an employee to perform at 100% if he has four hours of sleep and then six hours on foot,” said Joaquín Luken, executive director of the Smart Border Coalition, which aims to streamline border crossings.

Wait times averaged three hours to get back into Mexico in mid-March, he said.

“You have a complete shift of the profile of a crosser,” said Luken.

Before, people would cross to shop, eat, or visit. But now, border crossings are strictly business—people who need to cross for school, work, or care for a family member.

“So, of course, most of the businesses here in the South Bay are struggling, and this impact does trickle up the county,” he said of San Diego County.

Reece Rackley, a 30-year-old who lives in Clairemont, crosses the border to see a doctor in Baja California to save money on medical care. She’s one of roughly 1 million Americans who travel to Mexico yearly to save on health care.

Waiting in long lines to return home can be “very, very frustrating,” she said.

Victor Navarro, 27, a social worker and student at San Diego City College, recently broke down crying when asked about the long waits.

“I’ve lost at least two or three years of my life in that line,” said Navarro, who lives in the La Postal neighborhood of Tijuana.

“Why is that happening? Do they hate us? Do they want us to be standing there in line? Are they humiliating us?” asked Navarro.

Does the U.S.-Mexico border need to be this way?

As President Joe Biden worked to salvage a border deal with Congress in January, he said he would “shut down” the U.S.-Mexico border. His words echoed former President Donald Trump, who threatened in 2019 to close the border if Mexico didn’t step up its immigration enforcement.

People in the Cali-Baja region wish officials in Washington would stop saying that.

“Number one, you can’t close a border,” said Luken. “Especially when you look at Mexico being the U.S.’s number one trading partner.” One in every 29 workers in the United States has a job created or supported by U.S.-Mexico trade, the 2022 Atlantic Council study shows.

On Monday, many commuters woke at 1 a.m. to get into a four-hour line. When they finally arrived at the checkpoint just before dawn, they found less than a third of Customs and Border Protection’s available booths were open. Some wondered aloud whether the traffic nightmare wasn’t just a slow-moving demonstration of Washington’s threats.

Customs and Border Protection has said it shifted resources to handle large groups of migrants who overwhelm border officials to cross into the United States.

“CBP has taken significant steps to surge personnel and resources to impacted sectors and address the challenges we are experiencing across the southwest border,” a Department of Homeland Security official said in January.

Border officials also are trying to make sure fentanyl doesn’t enter the country.

Luken, of the Smart Border Coalition, said when officers take an extra three seconds to open and shut a car door, multiplied by the 150,000 to 160,000 people who cross daily, it’s easy to see how wait times are compounding.

Customs and Border Protection officials recently declined an interview with CalMatters, but Homeland Security officials have acknowledged that frustrated daily commuters and excessively long border lines highlight a need for funding to address what Washington has described as a border crisis.

“CBP will continue to evaluate the situation along the border and make operational changes as necessary,” Homeland Security said in a statement. “Stakeholders will be provided with operational updates as they become available.”

The Homeland Security statement also put some of the blame on people entering the United States irregularly and the people who smuggle them in.

“Encounter numbers continue to fluctuate as smugglers and bad actors continue to spread falsehoods and show complete disregard for the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable migrants,” the agency said. “The fact remains: the United States continues to enforce immigration law, and our borders are not open for those without a legal basis to enter the country.”