SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Vendors who sell everything from ceramic piggy banks to bottle openers along the northbound lanes at the San Ysidro Port of Entry say their sales are down by as much as 50 percent since Donald Trump took office earlier this year.
Jorge Chávez, who has been a vendor at the border crossing for 45 years, says in recent months, he has noticed an even lower number of people waiting in line to cross into the U.S.
“This is hurting our business,” he said in Spanish. “Our sales had been diminishing for a while, but since Trump became president in January, they have plummeted.”
Carlos, another vendor at the crossing, said many of his counterparts have given up and have moved on to other lines of work.
“The summer used to be our high season, Holy Week and Christmastime, too, but that has all changed,” he said. “It’s flat year round.”
When asked by the El Sol Newspaper in Tijuana why he thinks people aren’t crossing as much, Carlos said many are afraid their visas will be taken away.
He also blamed long border waits.
“When people sit in line for five, six hours, they get frustrated and won’t buy anything.”
Overall, according to Joaquín Luken, executive director of the Smart Border Coalition based in San Diego, numbers of legal border crossings at California’s seven ports of entry are down this year when compared to the first quarter of 2024.
Luken said last year during the first four months of the year, there were 198,000 daily crossings from Baja California to California.
This year, he says there have been about 193,000 daily crossings.
“There’s been a reduction of about one percent, these are numbers that can adjust up or down, I don’t consider it alarming.”
Luken blames “noise, disinformation and uncertainty surrounding immigration policies, a lot of stuff on social media that people having their crossing cards and visas taken away.”
He points out that most border crossers are U.S. Citizens or permanent residents who have nothing to worry about.
“All this talk of visas or immigration really shouldn’t affect these people, but there’s always misleading information out there about what is happening and many simply choose not to cross the border.
Luken’s figures and the border vendors’ observations contradict a recent University of Texas El Paso study.
It found that traffic volume for commercial and non-commercial border crossings, at the top 10 ports of entry between Mexico and the U.S., have actually increased slightly.
According to UTEP’s data, commercial crossings are up so far this calendar year by 0.3 percent while non-commercial crossings are up by 1.5 percent.
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