San Ysidro Port

Asbestos insulation must be removed from the port of entry at San Ysidro, the world's busiest land border crossing, forcing the shutdown of four traffic lanes for 18 months beginning next year, government officials say. The planned lane shutdowns, revealed to area officials and business leaders last month, has set off alarm bells along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The San Ysidro port of entry was traversed last year by 50.

SAN DIEGO - A woman claiming to be the daughter of the world's most wanted drug trafficker was arrested at the San Ysidro port of entry Friday afternoon after trying to enter the country with fraudulent documents, according to a criminal complaint and a high-ranking U.S. law enforcement official. Alejandrina Gisselle Guzman Salazar allegedly told U.S. customs officers that she was traveling to Los Angeles to give birth. After questioning, she admitted that she was the daughter of Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, the leader of Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, said the unidentified official who is not authorized to speak about the case.

The body of a 40-year-old Mexican man was found early Saturday a half-mile east of the San Ysidro port of entry at the international border, a San Diego Police spokesman said. The body was found at 8:48 a.m. by an alien crossing the border. Authorities were unable Saturday to determine the cause of death or the dead man's identity, but a coroner's deputy said an autopsy would be performed this morning.

Reporting from Tijuana -- The three men crawled through a sewage-crusted drain and then jumped the border fence, determined to get into San Diego. They encountered U.S. Border Patrol agents just as determined to stop them. When the agents captured one man, they were pelted by rocks and sticks, according to U.S. authorities. In response, an agent shot one of the rock-throwers in the head, a fatal wound that knocked him off the fence and back into Mexico. The shooting Tuesday evening renewed the debate over the proper use of force along the increasingly fortified U.S.-Mexico border.

A Mexican national who is wanted in a slaying here was arrested at San Ysidro Port of Entry, authorities said Monday. Gregorio Vidaca Gonzalez, 49, entered the government checkpoint on foot about 9 p.m. Friday, presented a border crossing card and requested a permit to travel into the United States, said Vincent Bond, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement. Agents took Vidaca into custody after a computer check revealed that he was the subject of a no-bail murder warrant out of Norwalk, Bond said.

Waits at California border crossings were no longer than usual Thursday, the first day of stricter rules for entering the United States. Drivers waited about an hour at 6 a.m. to cross through the San Ysidro port from Tijuana. Pedestrians were delayed about 10 minutes, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "It's been great -- a nonevent," said Gurdit Dhillon, the agency's field operations director in San Diego. Thursday was the first day that U.S. and Canadian citizens 19 years and older had to show documents proving citizenship.

Customs officials say they seized 343 pounds of sea cucumbers at the San Ysidro port of entry as smugglers tried to bring the Asian culinary delicacy into the U.S. from Mexico. Inspectors found undeclared sea cucumbers in a minivan in San Diego on Sunday afternoon. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Jackie Dizdul said the animals were hidden in the luggage of two Chinese citizens, a 51-year-old man and his 24-year-old son. Sea cucumbers are eaten in soups in Asia, where they are harvested from the ocean bottom and dried.

The morning commute from their oceanside homes in Tijuana had become routine for friends Sergio Luna and Kevin Romero. The Californians, who had moved to Mexico to save money, liked to beat the congestion at the border crossing by arriving before 3 a.m. But Monday morning they never made it to their jobs in San Diego. As they sat in their Mazda pickup truck in the line of traffic, a gunman tapped on the window and fatally shot both men with a 9-millimeter weapon, according to Baja California authorities.

A Mexican teenager pleaded guilty Friday to fatally shooting a U.S. Border Patrol agent last summer while attempting to rob him of government property in a remote area east of San Diego. Christian Daniel Castro-Alvarez, 17, and an unspecified number of co-conspirators crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and lured Agent Robert W. Rosas Jr. out of his vehicle while he was on routine patrol, according to the plea agreement filed in federal court in San Diego. Rosas, 30, was shot multiple times by Castro-Alvarez and one or more co-conspirators.

Customs officials say they seized 343 pounds of sea cucumbers at the San Ysidro port of entry as smugglers tried to bring the Asian culinary delicacy into the U.S. from Mexico. Inspectors found undeclared sea cucumbers in a minivan in San Diego on Sunday afternoon. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Jackie Dizdul said the animals were hidden in the luggage of two Chinese citizens, a 51-year-old man and his 24-year-old son. Sea cucumbers are eaten in soups in Asia, where they are harvested from the ocean bottom and dried.

The nation's busiest border crossing was closed and declared a crime scene Tuesday after at least two U.S. agents attempted to stop smugglers from speeding through the San Ysidro Port of Entry by firing their weapons at three vans loaded with suspected illegal immigrants. Port Director Oscar Preciado said it was the first time officials had shuttered the 24-lane border crossing to vehicular traffic since President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Three people in the vans suffered injuries and a person in a nearby car also was wounded in the unusually brazen smuggling attempt, U.S. authorities said.

A Mexican national who is wanted in a slaying here was arrested at San Ysidro Port of Entry, authorities said Monday. Gregorio Vidaca Gonzalez, 49, entered the government checkpoint on foot about 9 p.m. Friday, presented a border crossing card and requested a permit to travel into the United States, said Vincent Bond, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement. Agents took Vidaca into custody after a computer check revealed that he was the subject of a no-bail murder warrant out of Norwalk, Bond said.

Waits at California border crossings were no longer than usual Thursday, the first day of stricter rules for entering the United States. Drivers waited about an hour at 6 a.m. to cross through the San Ysidro port from Tijuana. Pedestrians were delayed about 10 minutes, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. "It's been great -- a nonevent," said Gurdit Dhillon, the agency's field operations director in San Diego. Thursday was the first day that U.S. and Canadian citizens 19 years and older had to show documents proving citizenship.

For U.S. inspectors at the Mexican border here, the 43,000 cars and trucks that pour north each day present a nonstop guessing game of who's hiding what--and where. Increasingly, immigration officials say, the answer is that smugglers are sneaking undocumented immigrants inside suffocatingly snug recesses. Migrants are secreted inside converted gas tanks. Suspended on plywood racks above the pavement. Tucked under false floors. Next to engines.