When we bought this hilltop in early 2012, Mexican immigration was at a historically low point. 2011 represented the trough of a decade-long decline in Mexican migration driven by the 2008–09 financial crisis, a strengthening Mexican economy, and dramatically increased US border enforcement. After the Great Recession in 2007–2008, migration from Mexico declined sharply, falling from 1,089,092 apprehensions in fiscal year 2006 to 340,252 apprehensions in fiscal year 2011. Around the same time, the number of Border Patrol agents increased dramatically under the Bush administration and into the Obama administration, from 11,264 in fiscal 2005 to 21,444 in fiscal 2011. The combination of reduced economic demand and increased immigration enforcement led to a significant reduction in the number of single adults coming to the border. Total southwest border apprehensions in fiscal year 2011 were considered remarkably low and was cited as evidence that Obama-era enforcement was working. I’m not sure it entered into our thinking too much. In fact, everyone assumes that living in a “border town” like San Diego makes one more aware of illegal immigration and I’m not sure that ever entered our minds. It would be hard not to notice that there is a heavy Hispanic influence in San Diego (and Southern California in general), but coming from New York City, it was anything but a stark difference to us. We had come to accept, embrace and enjoy living in a multi-cultural environment and things here just seems like business a usual…at least from 2012 until we moved here full-time at the end of 2019.
An important distinction between 2011 and today is that in 2011 Mexicans still dominated the border crossing population. Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala together accounted for 98 percent of all Border Patrol apprehensions from 2005 to 2010. The era of mass non-Mexican migration, Venezuelans, Cubans, Haitians, Central Americans in large numbers, had not yet arrived. The border story in 2011 was still primarily a US-Mexico bilateral story. By 2025–2026 that composition had completely transformed. The 2021–2024 surge was driven overwhelmingly by non-Mexicans, and the current collapse in numbers reflects the suppression of that non-Mexican flow as much as anything specific to Mexico.
Since February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s current term, Border Patrol has recorded fewer than 10,000 encounters a month at the southwestern border, the lowest totals in more than 25 years of available monthly data. Recent totals have been even lower than the 16,182 encounters in April 2020 when international migration plummeted in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. Migrant encounters at the US-Mexico border have fallen to lows not seen since the 1960s. Strangely enough, 2011, a meaningful year for our move to San Diego, still matters as a benchmark. 2011 was the reference point that the Obama administration used to argue its enforcement was working. 340,000 apprehensions was celebrated as a sign of effective policy. The Trump second term has now pushed numbers to roughly one-third of that 2011 level on an annualized basis. Migrant encounters fell by 93.3% from February to July 2025, as compared to the same period in 2024. The two factors driving the 2025–2026 decline that were not present in 2011 are Mexican government cooperation and deportation. Mexican authorities recorded more encounters than did the US Border Patrol every single month between May 2024 and March 2025 (mostly due to pressure from Trump). And, of course, the interior deportation operations create a major deterrent effect on would-be migrants still in their home countries. Trump has certainly changed the tone of immigrating to the U.S. (both illegally and legally…given that he has seen fit to blur many of the distinctions based on his or Steven Miller’s whims).
But our personal experience with immigration dates less from 2011 than from 2019, when we moved here full-time. That was when we took charge of our property and started thinking about making it our home rather than our second house. In addition to merging our furnishings from three different places (NYC, Utah and Ithaca) and finally sorting out the whys and wherefores of living on this hilltop, we also got more firmly connected to our local service people. As much as other people around the country might think that living in a border town involves wetbacks running across your front yard every day, that’s the furthest thing from the truth. The reality is that 34.34% of San Diego County’s total population is Hispanic or Latino. Among the Hispanic population in San Diego County, the largest group is of Mexican origin, with a population of 972,117, representing 86.24% of the total Hispanic population. Doing the math, approximately 29–30% of San Diego County’s total population is of Mexican origin specifically, roughly 970,000 people out of a county population of around 3.3 million. Make no mistake, these people are not Mexican, they are Mexican American and they are a mainstay of our community
The Mexican-origin presence in San Diego is not primarily an immigration story in the contemporary sense, it is a deep historical and multigenerational community. Hispanic and Latino presence in the San Diego region dates to before 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War and San Diego, along with the rest of California, became part of the United States. Many residents of Mexican descent are third, fourth, or fifth generation Americans whose families predate California statehood. In fact, in terms of the percentage of the San Diego population that consists of unauthorized (illegal) aliens is middle-of-the-pack compared to other counties in the U.S., not an outlier, despite its border location. Between 150,000 and 170,000 people in San Diego County do not have legal status, with an additional 150,000 people living in mixed-status households. In 2019, the Migration Policy Institute estimated 169,000 unauthorized immigrants lived in San Diego County, representing about a quarter of the total foreign-born population. If the local unauthorized population increased at the same rate as the national total from 2019 to 2023, that would suggest approximately 210,000 unauthorized, however, since the main countries fueling the national rise increased only minimally in San Diego’s census data, the local population likely still resembles the 2019 figure more closely. So the working estimate is roughly 150,000–170,000 — approximately 5% of San Diego County’s total population of 3.3 million.
Counterintuitively, San Diego ranks in the middle of the pack among large California counties despite being a border county. Immigrants make up a smaller share of population in San Diego County than in large Los Angeles-area and Bay Area counties, and a slightly larger share than in large Inland California counties. Immigrants are concentrated in California’s large coastal counties. Foreign-born residents represented at least one-third of the population in Santa Clara (42.3%), San Mateo (36.1%), Alameda (35.7%), San Francisco (35.1%), and Los Angeles (33.6%) counties — all higher than San Diego’s 23–25%. California has more undocumented immigrants than any other state — approximately 2.25 million as of 2023, down from a peak of 2.8 million in 2007. Its share has fallen from 23% to 16% of the national total. Texas is now a close second at 2.05 million. Florida has seen the largest increase in recent years, from 0.9 million in 2021 to 1.6 million in 2023.
The counterintuitive finding is worth underscoring. You might expect a border county to have the highest concentration of unauthorized immigrants, but the data consistently shows otherwise. Several reasons explain this. Most unauthorized immigrants don’t stay near the border. They move inland to established communities with employment, family networks, and lower enforcement profiles. The border is a crossing point, not a destination. San Diego’s enforcement environment has historically been intense. The San Diego sector has been one of the most heavily staffed Border Patrol sectors for decades, creating a deterrent to settling locally. And yet…the 2025–2026 enforcement surge has been concentrated here. From January to mid-October 2025, ICE’s San Diego field office made 4,934 immigration arrests — far surpassing the 764 arrests made in all of 2024. The San Diego field office conducted nearly 13,000 removals last year, and by September 2025 the San Diego area of responsibility had surpassed the Los Angeles territory in total arrests.
One out of every five unauthorized immigrants in San Diego County works in the food and service industry. Immigrants in San Diego County contribute to about 25% of the region’s GDP. The tourism economy, over $22 billion in fiscal 2024, is particularly exposed to labor force disruption from enforcement actions. And there is the youth skew to consider. Of San Diego County residents under 18, 37% are Hispanic, meaningfully higher than the overall 34–35% county share, indicating that the Mexican-origin population is younger on average than the county as a whole and will represent a growing share of the population going forward. In short: roughly one in three San Diego County residents is of Mexican origin — a community of nearly a million people with roots going back well before the US-Mexico border existed in its current form.
Tomorrow I will say goodbye to Joventino, my gardener, who is going home to Mexico to care for his ailing mother. If he an illegal? Who knows and who cares? Around here, we don’t ask or even think to ask. He works harder than any two men and I will miss him for the 3-5 month he expects to be gone…and I sincerely hope he can and will return.