SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA - MAY 3: Traffic backs up the San Ysidro Southbound Inspection as people enter Tijuana, Mexico at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry on May 3, 2025 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
San Diego, California – After years of delays, bureaucratic stalls, and a project site that sat quiet far too long, the long-awaited Otay Mesa East Port of Entry has finally roared to life — and it began with a mountain of rubble.
Construction crews this month began what officials call the “crushing operation,” using excess concrete and debris hauled in from the San Diego Airport Terminal One renovation. Instead of sending the material to a landfill, the rubble is being ground down and recycled as the structural base for new buildings and roadways at the border crossing. For SANDAG, Caltrans, and the taxpayers footing the bill, it’s an unexpectedly elegant solution.
Maria Rodriguez Molina, SANDAG’s director of Mega Projects, said the timing couldn’t have been better. With Terminal One wrapping up its redevelopment, 100,000 cubic yards of concrete were available — and Otay Mesa East needed exactly that kind of fill.
“There are about 100 trucks a day coming in for the next three to five months,” Rodriguez said. “The materials unloaded here are part of a crushing operation; the base will be taken throughout the site in the locations for the new buildings and roads.”
By reusing the rubble, Rodriguez says the project is shaving off hundreds of thousands of dollars in materials costs, cutting vehicle miles traveled, and sharply reducing emissions. “It was perfect timing and a win-win for everybody,” she said.
The stakes for the project are enormous. Otay Mesa East is slated to cost nearly $1.3 billion, funded by a patchwork of federal, state, and regional dollars, including a recent $150 million injection from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Once complete, the port of entry is expected to ease congestion, speed up commercial crossings, and strengthen binational trade.
But getting to this point has been anything but smooth. The project was originally expected to be completed by September of this year. Instead, construction stalled due to design revisions, staffing shortages, and contractor challenges — leaving a fully finished Mexican counterpart waiting on the other side of the border.
Now, with heavy trucks streaming through the site daily and crushers roaring back to life, the work is finally advancing again. In the middle of the dust clouds and diesel rumble, the mood on-site is something close to relief. After years of false starts, the Otay Mesa East Port of Entry is no longer an idea stalled on paper. It’s a real construction zone — and a long-delayed international project is beginning, at last, to move forward.
