Officials Reopen San Ysidro Pedestrian Crossings, Vehicle Traffic Lanes Remain Closed

Sunday, November 25, 2018
By City News Service


Above: Concertina wire placed at the U.S.- Mexico border by U.S. military personnel, Nov. 16, 2018.

UPDATE: 3:58 p.m., Nov. 25, 2018

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports pedestrian crossings are open at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, north and southbound.

San Diego's Metropolitan Transit System is also reporting Blue Line services are back to normal.
UPDATE: 2:56 p.m., Nov. 25, 2018
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials closed both the pedestrian and vehicle border crossings in San Ysidro Sunday as members of the migrant caravan in Tijuana marched toward the border, and some reportedly tried to enter the United States illegally.

Traffic northbound into the United States as well as southbound into Mexico had been stopped, CBP's San Diego office tweeted around 11:30 a.m.

CBP officials said additional personnel were deployed to the border Sunday morning in preparation for multiple planned demonstrations on both sides. Officials said they moved to close the border after some demonstrators tried to enter the U.S. through the San Ysidro Port of Entry's vehicle lanes.

"As the demonstrations on the Mexican side reached the border area, some members of the demonstration split off to head towards multiple locations along the border," the department's statement said. "Some attempted to enter the U.S. both directly east and west of the border crossing. These (are) attempts to illegally enter the U.S., and the response to them continue. Some attempted to illegally enter the U.S. through both the northbound and southbound vehicles lanes at the port of entry itself. Those persons were stopped and turned back to Mexico."

Caravan members began marching from their shelter at the Benito Juarez sports complex to Mexico's El Chaparral border crossing, Mexican news site Frontera reported. Videos posted to Twitter showed caravan members rushing past Mexican federal police who had been blocking them from getting too close to the border.

American authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets to keep members of the caravan back from the border fence, according to Brendan Cassidy, an organizer with the San Diego Migrant and Refugee Coalition, who was near the scene.

Cassidy's group planned to march to the border in San Ysidro to support the migrants Sunday, and he said members of the caravan were trying to meet up with demonstrators on the U.S. side when they were stopped.

"From folks on the other side, it appears like they were trying to march to El Chaparral and they got blocked by police," Cassidy told City News Service. "They were able to call the San Diego side and tell us what was going on."

Several media reports also said tear gas and flash-bang grenades were used by authorities on the U.S. side. Videos also showed some of the migrants throwing rocks across the border fence.

The Otay Mesa Port of Entry a few miles to the east remained open.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2018/nov/2...ssing-amid-ca/