Mexico sets up camp near San Diego border wall gap to intercept US-bound migrants

The Mexican government significantly escalated enforcement of its border with the United States this week with the installation of a camp at a break in the border wall in San Diego County. 

The government sanctioned camp is one of two that Mexican authorities plan to operate on the south side of the border in Baja California near Jacumba, a rural desert community in the southeastern part of the county, to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. 

The area is a popular entry point for migrants from all over the world. Tens of thousands have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico in the San Diego region since September. On the U.S. side, makeshift encampments have formed next to breaks in the border wall as arrivals have outpaced Border Patrol’s capacity to apprehend and process them.

Migrant arrivals outside of legal ports of entry have reached record highs the past two years, shining a national spotlight on border communities, including San Diego County. As a result, political pressure is mounting on Congress and the Biden administration to take action.

Humanitarian aid workers who have been providing food, water, medical care and shelter to the migrants after they cross into the U.S. first noticed Mexican authorities setting up camp on the other side of the border on Wednesday. 

The Mexican camp, likely the first of its kind in Baja California, effectively blocks an opening in the border wall where migrants would otherwise cross and turn themselves into the Border Patrol to pursue an asylum case in the U.S. 

Instead, Mexican authorities said they are detaining anyone who tries to cross, sending them to a government migrant center and then transporting them south, according to David Pérez Tejada Padilla, who leads Mexico’s National Migration Institute, or INM, in Baja California. 

Tejada Padilla did not answer questions about whether migrants detained at the camp will be deported, but said they will not face criminal consequences. 

The camp, which is jointly run by INM, Mexican National Guard and the Mexican Army, aims to be a new, “more effective” approach to Mexico’s enforcement of the border, Tejada Padilla told inewsource. Authorities plan to set up another camp in the area and will be operating them indefinitely. 

Early Friday, inewsource reporters saw a handful of uniformed Mexican Army members at the camp, which consisted of four covered white tents, water and propane tanks, outdoor heaters, two portable toilets, lighting systems and a generator. One INM van was parked at the camp. 

There did not appear to be any migrants detained there at the time, but Tejada Padilla said the camp was already operational and had apprehended migrants.

The camps on the Mexican side will likely slow crossings in the area, but could push migrants into more remote and potentially more dangerous parts of the border where there is less visible enforcement, according to Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program.

The encampment on the U.S. side of the border has seen far fewer migrants in recent weeks than months before, as the Mexican government has made it more difficult for migrants to use the country as a route to the U.S. following talks with the Biden administration in December. 

December saw hundreds of migrants crossing into the U.S. in the area daily, according to aid workers. Those numbers fell as Mexico increased deportations and patrols along its border with the U.S.