The border wall system running through San Diego County has been one of the most fortified stretches in the southwest for decades, beginning with a border security push in the 1990s and continuing with miles of replacement fencing constructed during President Donald Trump’s first administration.
But some spots remain where there is no fence at all, and an effort to close those gaps has been tied up in court over funding and further complicated by the specialized environmental design necessary for those areas.
Projects to close those gaps — in the works since the Biden administration — could now be completed by the second Trump administration, with panel installation at one San Diego border canyon spot expected to begin next month.
Efforts are also underway to build new fence in Texas, the Department of Homeland Security announced over the weekend.
In the past two months, Trump’s push for border security has already altered the landscape at the San Diego- Tijuana border, with U.S. troops installing multiple layers of concertina wire along the fence and Mexican National Guard troops patrolling popular crossing routes, including at the gaps.
Partly as a result, Border Patrol apprehensions in the San Diego sector — already low before Trump took office in late January — have sharply fallen in recent weeks.
Data released last week by Customs and Border Protection shows that 1,650 migrant encounters were recorded within the San Diego sector last month, a 74% decrease from January and a 95% decrease from February last year. By comparison, at the start of 2025, the sector recorded about 1,700 migrant encounters in a week, according to data shared by Border Patrol on the social media app X.
“There is a sense of more tranquility on the border,” said Gen. Laureano Carrillo, head of the Baja California Civil Security Secretariat, who recently praised the collaboration with both the Mexican National Guard and U.S. officials.
More new fence
One of Trump’s core promises during his first time in office was to build more walls along the southwest border.
While he has focused much more of his second term so far on deportations, he again has declared a national emergency at the southern border, under which he instructed the Department of Homeland Security secretary “to take all appropriate actions to deploy and construct physical barriers to ensure complete operational control of the southern border of the United States,” the agency said.
Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance said that Trump is looking to complete the border wall system by the end of his term.
Some of that will be in San Diego County.
The Biden administration had tried to close some of the gaps in the fence, but some construction was halted last year due to a legal dispute filed in the Southern District of Texas alleging that the administration failed to use previously allocated fiscal 2020-21 funds to build new border walls and instead used them for repair projects of existing barriers, among other things.
Now the Trump administration has gotten the green light to forge ahead.
DHS has in court documents identified 19 other barrier projects along the southwest border “in areas where new barriers are needed because of border security and public safety risks” — three of them in San Diego County.
There is a 2.1-mile section near Jacumba Hot Springs, 350 feet in Smuggler’s Gulch near Imperial Beach, and two sections of 600 feet and 1,500 feet east of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry.
The planning and design process for those projects is underway, and panel installation is expected to begin as early as next month at the Smuggler’s Gulch site, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.
Construction on the other projects is expected to begin later this year, the spokesperson added.
What that construction might look like is unclear and has environmental advocates concerned.
In court filings, the San Diego projects were among those that required new infrastructure to address drainage and erosion due to challenging terrain. Last month, a federal judge approved the use of the funds to cover those features in order to move forward with those projects.
In addition, advocacy groups filed an appeal with the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals asking to intervene in the South Texas case to defend the settlement reached in a separate case that allowed the funds to be used for mitigation efforts to address environmental effects caused by the wall’s construction.
That case is tied to Trump’s first term, when he declared a state of emergency to free up additional funds from the Department of Defense to build his promised border wall.
The Southern Border Communities Coalition, made up of 60 organizations from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, was one of the entities that challenged the Trump administration in court. The case was later settled under the Biden administration, with an agreement for mitigation and remediation efforts, including studying the border wall’s impact on wildlife and occasionally opening border stormwater gates for sensitive species.
But the preliminary injunction issued in March in the South Texas case barred the government from using the funds for anything other than the construction of new barriers, including such remediation efforts. SBCC and the Sierra Club, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, appealed to the 5th Circuit. Oral argument was heard in the case late last month.
Meanwhile, SBCC director Lilian Serrano said the advocacy groups are keeping a close eye on Trump’s plans. Serrano said they could explore further legal options “because we know the harm (the border wall) will cause and the negative impact it will have on our communities.”
Serrano raised concerns that the construction of more walls along the U.S.- Mexico border would “destroy our wildlife, flora and fauna,” as well as endanger migrants.
“The border wall has never worked to stop migration,” Serrano said. “All it does is push migrants to take much more dangerous routes.”
Different funding, from 2018, was used on the first day of Trump’s second term to resume construction to close a 100-foot gap and replace a deteriorating border fence in the southwest area of Friendship Park, between Playas de Tijuana and Imperial Beach.
Military support on both sides
One gap that is now being closely monitored by the Mexican National Guard is in the Nido de las Águilas neighborhood in eastern Tijuana, located east of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, not far from where a new border crossing for passenger vehicles and commercial trucks is being built.
There, a stretch of the San Diego border fence is interrupted by mountainous terrain.
The Mexican National Guard has set up a permanent camp to guard the area, and soldiers on the ground said they had seen few, if any, people crossing there recently. Their bolstered presence at the border fence and U.S.- Mexico ports of entry is part of a deal with the U.S. to delay the imposition of import tariffs.
Farther east, in a hard-to-access area of Tecate’s Ejido Jacumé, which borders Jacumba Hot Springs, clothes and documents lay scattered on the ground along a section of dilapidated border fence that migrants could easily walk around to enter the United States. Nearby sat a burned-out van that Mexican soldiers believe may have been used by smugglers and then set on fire.
The area was a popular crossing spot last year. It has largely turned quiet.
Mexican soldiers have also set up checkpoints along the Mexicali- Tijuana highway to disrupt drug and human smuggling. The soldiers randomly select vehicles traveling in both directions for a roadside inspection that takes an average of two and a half minutes.
Mexico’s Secretary of Security and Citizen Protection Omar García Harfuch said Friday on X that the National Guard arrested three people carrying 42 kilograms of fentanyl and 7 kilograms of heroin on the Tecate- Mexicali highway.
North of the border, hundreds of U.S. Marines assigned to Task Force Sapper are providing engineering support to the Border Patrol. Triple strands of concertina wire have been strung along the primary and secondary fences from the San Ysidro Port of Entry to the one at Otay Mesa.
The first of three designated border areas to be reinforced along San Diego was nearing completion last week.
The Border Patrol continues to handle any migrant encounters in the area, as the troops only focus on reinforcement tasks, said U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Tyrone Barrion, commanding officer of Task Force Sapper.
“If ( Marines and sailors) encounter any type of activity from aliens or any other folks that are trying to cross the barrier, they have direct contact and communication with the Border Patrol,” Barrion said. “The Marine Corps side is instructed to either carry on operations if safe or then cease operations and vacate the location in order to give Border Patrol room to respond.”
As of last week, only one incident involving a person attempting to cross the barrier has been recorded at the site, he said.
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