US Closes Migrant Center On California-Mexico Border

US immigration authorities said on Thursday that they had begun to dismantle the temporary treatment center in Otay Mesa, California, after seeing a considerable drop in arrests in the border area with Tijuana (Mexico).

Last year, we had an average of 1,200 apprehensions per day, and most of them were made in this sector, which includes Otay Mesa; this year, the average has been about 270 apprehensions per day, and this includes those who try to cross by sea, because they find that the land border is closed to agents,” Border Patrol spokesman Gerardo Gutiérrez of the San Diego sector told EFE.

The average of 270 apprehensions per day this fiscal year - which began last October 1 - involves numerous attempts to cross the border before the start of President Donald Trump's administration, but as of January apprehensions are at their lowest level since 2021.

The temporary center was inaugurated in January 2023, when apprehensions along the border were at their highest level, with more than 250,000 per month. The goal of US Customs and Border Protection was to process up to 500 people daily at the center.

Now, however, “by reducing the demand for processing detainees, agents can focus on doing the job they joined the Border Patrol to do, which is patrolling the border area,” Gutiérrez added.

This decision comes at a time when it has been reported that three immigrants, two men and a woman, have died trying to enter the United States through remote and high-risk areas of the Mexico-California border, the US Customs and Border Protection Service said on Thursday.

The deaths occurred in two separate incidents on the afternoon of March 14. 

In the first incident, Border Patrol agents responded to an emergency call on a truck trail in Cuchama, in the Otay Desert, where they found two women, one of them lifeless and the other the person who had called for help.

Less than an hour after the women were found, the agents responded to another distress call in the wilderness of the Otay Mountains. Three migrants reported being lost and complained of symptoms of hypothermia, difficulty breathing, lack of water or food and low cell phone batteries.