California will start work next month on a new port of entry at its border with Mexico, Governor Gavin Newsom said yesterday.
Called “Otay Meda East”, the port will address the growth in trade between the two countries and growing queues at two existing ports of entry, which Newsom said were “stressed up to the nines”.
The port will be around 3km east of the existing Otay Meda port connecting San Diego and Tijuana in Mexico. It’s already California’s busiest commercial vehicle crossing.
Work is expected to finish in December 2027.
The governor’s office noted that Mexico is California’s top export market, buying $33bn of goods and services each year.
In the other direction, California imports $62bn worth of goods from Mexico, second only to China.
“The San Ysidro Port of Entry, the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, they’re stressed up to the nines,” Newsom said. “People are still waiting, either on foot or by vehicle, for hours and hours.”
Decades in the making
According to the San Diego Association of Governments, trade between the US and Mexico supports more than 560,000 jobs in California.
Newsom said a new “CalGuard” initiative would prevent organised crime from moving guns, money and drugs through the crossing.
The governor said the project had been “decades in the making”. The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding in 2014, with a view to completing the project in 2017.
At that time, the cost was estimated to be $100m. When it is eventually opened, this will be partly met by toll income.
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