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Community Corner

IB: Once a Popular Illegal Port of Entry

23-year IB resident Gary Dayton witnessed immigrants running down the beach in 1989 while living on Seacoast Boulevard, and once hosed waist-high estuary mud off of an immigrant who requested he do so at his home on Fifth Street

Imperial Beach resident Gary Dayton remembers walking from his beachfront condo at 1460 South Seacoast Blvd. to the mouth of the Tijuana River, where he saw immigrants pulling each other across on a makeshift fairy boat using two rope lines.

“There was a man selling chips clipped to the front of his shirt” once they emerged from the water. “It was a commercial operation,” said Dayton.

Prior to 1993, the Imperial Beach Station of the Border Patrol incurred more than 1,000 apprehensions per day, according to Border Patrol Agent Rodolfo Zuniga. 

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This estimate does not take into account the number of aliens who evaded capture by rushing the border in a mass “banzai” formation. Dayton once took a photo of more than 25 immigrants running down the beach, which he hung in his living room and captioned, “Exchange Students Late for Class.”

Further inland, where the estuary meets Fifth Street back yards, 28-year veteran Border Patrol Supervisor Renee Gonzalez said, “I remember running through (residents’) yards with a helicopter overhead, chasing 20 illegals at 3 in the morning.

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“IB is totally different because of us,” said Gonzalez, talking about how much the border situation has changed since Operation Gatekeeper, the transformative change in border policy that increased personnel and improved infrastructure and technology in 1993.

Since then, criminal smuggling operations have been forced to shift eastward, to San Diego's East County, and as far afoot as Arizona, according to Zuniga.

In 1997 or ’98, Dayton stood in front of his Fifth Street home with a hose in hand. “I had a (border crosser) one time, and he'd just gotten out of the estuary and wanted me to hose him off.” Dayton remembered that the mud reached to the man's waist.

Since then, Dayton said that he has not seen any immigrants, though he will occasionally see discarded or hidden belongings, such as dirty clothing, which he interprets as evidence of illegals passing through his neighborhood.

According to Zuniga, since Gatekeeper, “The number of apprehensions has been decreasing through every fiscal year.”

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