Border Tourists

The US-Mexican border is so many things to so many people, it’s easy to forget you can go right up to it and touch it.  Sort of.

It wasn’t so many centuries ago (less than one) that it was only an imaginary line in the dirt, and folks on both sides could cross at will.  Today not one but at least two daunting barricades stretch virtually the entire length between the ocean and the San Ysidro port of entry, with the most formidable construction having occurred during just the last year. Seeing what’s been done isn’t all that easy. Although Border Field State Park is situated at the westernmost section of the border, automotive access to the park is now limited to those hours (usually weekends from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.) when the state park managers deign to staff the entry gates and collect the $5 parking fee. Pedestrians, bicyclists, and horseback riders usually can get in even when the car gates are closed. But it’s a long way from the park entrance to the actual fence.

So Mike Harris’s tour company makes a lot of sense, if you’re curious about what it all looks like. Harris is an almost-native (his family moved here when he was in grade school). He grew up in Imperial Beach, went to work for the Border Patrol, and after 26 years, took an early retirement. That was two and a half years ago. Since then he’s started Edgeline Tours, guiding curious visitors on a three- to four-hour adventure on the line.

A friend and I found the outing engrossing when we ventured out with Harris one morning last week. We started at the beach, where the increased fortification that’s taken place over the last 25 years is pretty stunning. The new 15-foot-tall steel mesh fence appears to block access to the charming old border monument, but Harris pushed open a gate and we were able to walk right up to it, almost in the shadow of Tijuana’s old bullring by the sea and the lighthouse that stands next to it. When we piled back into our vehicle, Harris drove us eastward, following the line as much as possible through the rugged terrain (which the tens of millions of dollars of recent government investment has made considerably more hospitable to the Border Patrol vehicles.)

The Tijuana River estuary, which adjoins the park, is considered to be a wetlands area of international stature, so Harris’s tour also provides glimpses into that natural richness, as well as the small community of sod and vegetable formers, stable owners, and other long-time residents who live around the park. But Harris, who’s a jovial and likable cicerone, is at his strongest providing insight into life as a Border Patrol agent.

We got more of that toward the end of the tour, when we stopped for a bathroom break at the aging facility that the agency rents at the San Ysidro port of entry and visited the gate where illegal aliens are ushered back into Mexico (usually to make another immediate attempt to cross over). The tour wrapped up with what for me was the highlight — a drive down into the nearby Tijuana River bed.  It’s a wide, concrete channel here, dry as dust at this time of year and filled with an ugly assortment of discarded beer cans, styrofoam cartons, rags, and other unidentifiable jetsam.  A wide stripe of yellow paint angling down the concrete demarcates the border on one bank of the sometime watercourse, and another one mirrors it on the other side. But in the riverbed, the border can’t be seen. We stood on the mythical line, moving back and forth between the two sovereign nations with impunity. It felt exhilerating.