The Brief

Government agencies are spending billions of dollars to improve wait times at the U.S.-Mexico border, but the checkpoints remain severely clogged — and border communities are hurting.

In recent months lines at the border often stretched for several hours, frustrating more than 150,000 students, cross-border families, health care workers, small business owners, and others who daily cross to and from Mexico. Experts say some fronterizas have stopped crossing the border as often, and the loss of foot traffic in the region has resulted in heavy sales losses for small businesses.

“Money we can replace, but time will never come back. Those people are wasting their time in that line,” said Sunil Gakherja, 49, who owns a small perfume store in San Ysidro, a neighborhood in San Diego, close to the border.

U.S. border officials point to the need to shift resources to handle irregular migration — people who come into the United States in places other than official ports of entry, usually to seek asylum. San Diego surpassed Tucson this month as Border Patrol’s busiest sector in the nation.

But border-area residents and business leaders say the federal government should staff the border effectively so that the $741-million expansion of the San Ysidro Port of Entry has its intended impact, to reduce wait times and stimulate the regional economy.

Research published by the Atlantic Council says a 10-minute reduction in wait times could lead to an additional $26 million worth of cargo entering the United States each month and an annual impact of $5.4 million on the U.S. economy from purchases by families and individuals entering the United States from Mexico.

In the San Diego region, regular border crossers say wait times are going up, not down. Waits that used to last 30 minutes to an hour on weekdays can now regularly take three to four hours. On several days last December, pedestrians waited six hours or more. Adding to their frustration, long lines also stretch southbound to enter Mexico.

“Devastating” is how Kenia Zamarripa described the waits on both sides of the border. She is vice president of international and public affairs at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

“This is families losing their incomes,” she said. “There are 800 small businesses in San Ysidro that depend on pedestrian crossings and, again, 90% of their customers cross on foot.”

State officials said it’s unclear how much California has missed out on in sales tax revenue because that information can’t be broken down by zip code.

Small border businesses suffering

After opening in 2017, the El Rincon restaurant in San Ysidro faced the same challenges and growing pains many small, family-run businesses contend with, said Andrea Alaniz. Her mom owns the Mexican food restaurant along San Ysidro Boulevard, a few blocks from the border.

“We just opened the doors, and it was just us doing the cooking and waiting tables — hoping that business would increase and keep on a nice trend,” she recalled.

Word quickly spread of her mother’s caseros — homemade family recipes from Guadalajara, Jalisco. Lines would wrap around the tiny restaurant, with some customers even driving from Los Angeles or crossing north from Baja California, for the food.

“You know, the spices … you can find the spices anywhere, but really, it’s the way my mom and my family cooks,” said Alaniz. “My mom’s an amazing cook, and our recipes … they go way back.”

The whole family — five siblings — pitched in to handle the increased volume and their newfound success.

“We all work here,” laughed Alaniz. “It was a Sunday, and I remember we were all here, and the music was blaring, and we were just dancing and having fun and it was a really nice feeling.”

Then the pandemic hit. Federal officials restricted cross-border travel. Business tanked. About 200 businesses closed in San Ysidro, a working-class, mostly immigrant community of about 25,000 people, said Jason Wells, president of the local chamber of commerce.

“Shut their doors forever. Gone,” he said.

Alaniz and her family managed to stay open and even sent some money home to family in Mexico, but it was a daily fight. “We just don’t get the same amount of people coming in, because people aren’t going back and forth anymore,” said Alaniz.

Multiple studies show immigrants like Alaniz’s family were a key economic engine for the United States’ rebound from the pandemic. Some 50% of the labor market’s recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data.

Zamarripa says it’s these same border communities that lose about $2 billion yearly because of excessive border wait times. She worries the latest bottlenecks at checkpoints could severely impact those struggling to get back on their feet.

Gakherja, the owner of the perfumery, described a Sunday customer who waited six hours to cross the border.

“He got in the line at 9 in the morning, and he got here at 3:30 p.m. It’s too much. Imagine they have kids who have to go to the restroom. They need food. They’re not thinking about shopping after that,” said Gakherja.

Waiting is the hardest part

It’s not just small businesses that are hurting. Those hardest hit by backlogs at inefficient ports of entry include the region’s hospitality and hospital workers, students, medical patients, and anyone who relies on the interdependence of a cross-border region to offset the skyrocketing costs of living in San Diego, one of the most expensive cities in the nation.

Hector Urquiza, a 19-year-old college student serving in the Army Reserves, lives with his brother in Tijuana because rent is too expensive in San Diego.

“When I had to go to work, there was a two-hour line. It was like a snake, you know, wiggling around. That was kind of painful,” said Urquiza.

Cross-border travelers often turn to Facebook to document their experiences and wait times because the official Customs and Border Protection data is considered inaccurate and unreliable. Cómo está la línea Tijuana (How is the Tijuana line), a Facebook group with 430,000 members, was founded in June 2013 when its creator relied on the official CBP wait times and was extraordinarily late for work, according to his posts.

Urquiza said people who regularly cross the border develop a system. It sometimes includes holding a spot in line for each other to cut down on their day-to-day commute, but Tijuana authorities recently have cracked down on the practice, making it harder to get through the school or work week.

“Like you can tell somebody to save your spot, but when you try to go back to your spot, the police are like, ‘Nah, no amigo’,” he said.

When commuters wait in border traffic for hours, business productivity across Southern California suffers, say local leaders.

“As a business owner, you can’t expect an employee to perform at 100% if he has four hours of sleep and then six hours on foot,” said Joaquín Luken, executive director of the Smart Border Coalition, which aims to streamline border crossings.

Wait times averaged three hours to get back into Mexico in mid-March, he said.

“You have a complete shift of the profile of a crosser,” said Luken.

Before, people would cross to shop, eat, or visit. But now, border crossings are strictly business—people who need to cross for school, work, or care for a family member.

“So, of course, most of the businesses here in the South Bay are struggling, and this impact does trickle up the county,” he said of San Diego County.

Reece Rackley, a 30-year-old who lives in Clairemont, crosses the border to see a doctor in Baja California to save money on medical care. She’s one of roughly 1 million Americans who travel to Mexico yearly to save on health care.

Waiting in long lines to return home can be “very, very frustrating,” she said.

Victor Navarro, 27, a social worker and student at San Diego City College, recently broke down crying when asked about the long waits.

“I’ve lost at least two or three years of my life in that line,” said Navarro, who lives in the La Postal neighborhood of Tijuana.

“Why is that happening? Do they hate us? Do they want us to be standing there in line? Are they humiliating us?” asked Navarro.

Does the U.S.-Mexico border need to be this way?

As President Joe Biden worked to salvage a border deal with Congress in January, he said he would “shut down” the U.S.-Mexico border. His words echoed former President Donald Trump, who threatened in 2019 to close the border if Mexico didn’t step up its immigration enforcement.

People in the Cali-Baja region wish officials in Washington would stop saying that.

“Number one, you can’t close a border,” said Luken. “Especially when you look at Mexico being the U.S.’s number one trading partner.” One in every 29 workers in the United States has a job created or supported by U.S.-Mexico trade, the 2022 Atlantic Council study shows.

On Monday, many commuters woke at 1 a.m. to get into a four-hour line. When they finally arrived at the checkpoint just before dawn, they found less than a third of Customs and Border Protection’s available booths were open. Some wondered aloud whether the traffic nightmare wasn’t just a slow-moving demonstration of Washington’s threats.

Customs and Border Protection has said it shifted resources to handle large groups of migrants who overwhelm border officials to cross into the United States.

“CBP has taken significant steps to surge personnel and resources to impacted sectors and address the challenges we are experiencing across the southwest border,” a Department of Homeland Security official said in January.

Border officials also are trying to make sure fentanyl doesn’t enter the country.

Luken, of the Smart Border Coalition, said when officers take an extra three seconds to open and shut a car door, multiplied by the 150,000 to 160,000 people who cross daily, it’s easy to see how wait times are compounding.

Customs and Border Protection officials recently declined an interview with CalMatters, but Homeland Security officials have acknowledged that frustrated daily commuters and excessively long border lines highlight a need for funding to address what Washington has described as a border crisis.

“CBP will continue to evaluate the situation along the border and make operational changes as necessary,” Homeland Security said in a statement. “Stakeholders will be provided with operational updates as they become available.”

The Homeland Security statement also put some of the blame on people entering the United States irregularly and the people who smuggle them in.

“Encounter numbers continue to fluctuate as smugglers and bad actors continue to spread falsehoods and show complete disregard for the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable migrants,” the agency said. “The fact remains: the United States continues to enforce immigration law, and our borders are not open for those without a legal basis to enter the country.”

The Orange County Registrar of Voters is sending teams to emergency shelters to make sure people can still can vote in the June 2 primary even if they are under evacuation orders because of the Garden Grove chemical spill threat.

The backstory

Some 40,000-50,000 people in and around Garden Grove were ordered to evacuate last Friday after a tank holding thousands of gallons of a toxic, highly flammable chemical threatened to explode. The evacuation area was sharply reduced Monday evening after public safety officials discovered pressure in the tank had been relieved.

But many Garden Grove and Stanton residents in the immediate vicinity of the tank, owned by the aerospace company GKN, are still under evacuation orders. Some fled their homes without even the bare essentials, much less their mail-in ballots for next week’s election.

How evacuees can vote

If you left your mail-in ballot at home, you can go to any of Orange County’s 38 vote centers and request a replacement ballot. You can find the locations of those centers here.

The O.C. Registrar on Tuesday also sent two teams to the emergency shelters in nearby Fountain Valley — at Freedom Hall and Los Amigos High School — to print replacement ballots for evacuees who need them. Those ballots can be mailed, dropped off at a vote center or placed in one of the county’s official ballot drop boxes. You can find the locations of those drop boxes here.

The drop box at Chapman Sports Park, which is within the evacuation zone, is unavailable. Registrar Bob Page said ballots were collected from the box when evacuations were first ordered. Page said his office has resumed retrieving ballots from two other drop boxes that were within the initial evacuation zone.

Conductor Daniel Harding will take over as the Los Angeles Philharmonic's music director next year, the organization announced Tuesday.

The appointment follows three years of intense speculation about who would succeed Gustavo Dudamel to oversee the influential orchestra, including concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, The Ford and with Youth Orchestra Los Angeles.

Harding’s tenure starts in the 2027-28 L.A. Phil season. The Oxford-born conductor is currently music director of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Italy and is well-known in L.A. as a guest conductor.

“ Daniel is a musician favorite during his last couple of times here during that Hollywood Bowl,” Kim Noltemy, L.A. Phil president and CEO, told LAist’s AirTalk Tuesday. “ He's a brilliant musician. He is absolutely committed to the idea of music education and helping develop the audiences of the future.”

Harding said in a statement Tuesday that making music with LA Phil musicians is a thrill and inspiration.

“So many great artists have found possibilities here that don’t exist anywhere else, and I come to California full of excitement for what we will discover and create together,” Harding said.

Harding will be the creative lead behind a team of acclaimed musicians, according to the L.A. Phil.

“This is gonna be the ultimate dream team,” Noltemy told AirTalk.

Esa-Pekka Salonen introduces Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel, then 26, back in 2007 as his successor.

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Al Seib

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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That includes Dudamel, who has led the orchestra since 2009 and will make his debut as the director of the New York Philharmonic this year. He was appointed last week as LA Phil’s artistic and cultural laureate.

It also includes LA Phil creative director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was the Phil's music director for 17 years between 1992 and 2009, conductor-in-residence Anna Handler, creative chair John Adams and others.

“We are taking a non-traditional approach to all of the artistic strategy — essentially by having a team of brilliant people working together to create a season that really inspires people and meets various audiences where they are,” Noltemy said.

Harding will conduct eight weeks of programming in his inaugural 2027-28 season, according to the LA Phil. That will increase to 12 weeks of programming in the seasons to follow.

Listen to the interview

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

When it comes to California’s climate future, the most important figure in the state’s chaotic governor’s race may not be any of the candidates on the debate stage. It may not even be outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, or President Donald Trump.

Instead, it might just be Chevron, the multinational oil company that was founded in the Golden State more than 100 years ago. It is among the largest producers, refiners, and sellers of petroleum products in a state rapidly shifting toward electric vehicles. Depending on which candidate is talking, the company is an example of how Big Oil is strangling consumers or an example of how climate regulations are strangling the state economy.

The behemoth — it reported $12.3 billion in profit last year — took the spotlight last month when an interviewer asked leading Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra about Chevron’s contributions to his campaign. The former state attorney general and Biden-era health secretary gave what seemed to be a candid response:

“Chevron, that’s the problem with politics. They’re not the bad guy. Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron. I need Chevron. My people of the state of California need Chevron … Chevron wants to give me a check, that’s — that’s their prerogative.”

The phrase “I need Chevron” soon appeared in anti-Becerra videos by the likes of climate hawk Jane Fonda, implying that the candidate was saying he needs Chevron to get elected. Progressive billionaire Tom Steyer, Becerra’s lead Democratic opponent, urged him to return the contribution and said he is “doing [the] bidding” of Big Oil. Representative Katie Porter, another leading Democrat, said in a statement that she “hasn’t made millions off Big Oil or taken their checks.”

Becerra is not entirely wrong. California consumes around 13 billion gallons of gasoline annually, all of it specifically formulated to meet the state’s stringent clean air standards. Most of it comes from just six refineries, and Chevron owns two that account for one-third of the state’s production. That gives the company and its peers tremendous leverage. But California’s gas consumption has declined by about 15% from a peak in 2004 due to improved fuel economy in conventional vehicles and growing adoption of electric vehicles. It could fall by half over the next two decades.

The primary is June 2. The challenge for the next governor will be to continue the energy transition while retaining the infrastructure needed to move and refine oil. This has never been accomplished in a place as large as California, which was the world’s fifth-largest economy in 2025. The risks are tremendous: If the state moves too quickly, it could create shortages and price spikes for drivers already paying the highest prices in the country. If it moves too slowly, it could lock in decades of air pollution and hinder global climate progress.

“It’s messy,” said Emily Grubert. She is a civil engineer and sociologist at Notre Dame who has studied fossil fuel transitions and advised the state government on oil infrastructure. “As soon as you realize that actually transitioning away from fossil fuels means you have to close things, people get really freaked out.”

Newsom spent much of his governorship going after Big Oil, an effort that included a series of executive actions to restrict fracking in Kern County oil fields. When the war in Ukraine sent gas prices surging, Newsom and Democrats in the Legislature passed a series of bills to stop what he called “price gouging.” These laws empowered a new oil-focused watchdog agency, created a tool that could impose refinery price caps, and required refineries to maintain certain storage reserves, all of which cut profit margins for Chevron and others. The new refinery rules added to multiple carbon taxes that make selling gasoline in California more expensive.

However, there is some evidence refiners have overcharged Californians. Even after accounting for state taxes, environmental fees, and production costs, a gap remains between gas prices in the Golden State and everywhere else. This gap appeared in 2015 after a refinery fire in Torrance and has come to be known as the “mystery gasoline surcharge.” It now averages about $1. Last fall, a state regulator concluded that refiners’ monopoly power may be the reason for the price spikes.

Oil companies accused Newsom of trying to regulate them out of existence, and many threatened to leave. Two major refiners, Wilmington and Benicia, announced last year that they would close their operations, forcing a state that already imports about 60 percent of its oil to rely on imports of gasoline refined in Asia. Chevron relocated its corporate headquarters from the San Francisco suburb of San Ramon to Houston in 2024, and it has delivered a series of ominous warnings this year as climate regulators have revised the state’s almost 15-year-old carbon tax.

“The proposed regulation will cripple the survivability of the state’s remaining refineries, which will result in California losing the entire industry,” Andy Walls, the president of Chevron’s refinery business, wrote in an open letter to Newsom in March. The implication was clear: unless you relax your regulations, we will leave the state and strand you without gasoline. That would mean paying Asian refiners to produce more of the state’s specific blend, at significant cost.

The Newsom administration spent much of 2025 trying to work out a grand bargain with the industry. The Legislature eased rules governing drilling in Kern County oil fields, helping maintain a stable supply of crude to refineries, It also delayed implementing a refinery profit cap, and allowed the temporary sale of gasoline with higher concentrations of ethanol. The state’s climate regulator has also suggested giving refineries free allowances under the state’s cap-and-trade system, even if it means less money for big projects like high-speed rail and sustainable housing. The idea is to give investors enough certainty that they’re willing to remain in California even as the state uses less gasoline.

Experts believe it will take a lot more than that to manage inevitable changes.

“You actually can’t have a smooth and safe and effective transition without some form of coordinating function for that decline,” said Grubert. She believes a degree of state ownership of refineries will be necessary to keep facilities open if they stop being profitable. The wrong approach, she says, would be to respond to each potential a refinery closure with ad hoc subsidies and state support, since that would allow refiners to extort the state one by one. 

That point was reinforced this month by a report from the California Energy Commission that has not received much notice. The analysis of the state’s shaky fuel system found that “California cannot sustainably manage this transition through repeated crisis interventions at an asset-by-asset level.” It suggested options that included “legal obligations to operate,” “centralized planning of closures,” and “direct state management or ownership of assets.”

The Iran war will accelerate a decline in both the supply of, and demand for, oil. Gas retailers like Chevron are already struggling to find additional imports of refined fuel, and some experts predict shortages if the Strait of Hormuz does not open within weeks. Meanwhile, electric vehicles continue gaining market share, and Newsom plans to roll out subsidies for them this year. Wider adoption of these vehicles, and hybrids, will further crimp demand, making any remaining refineries more likely to shutter.

Chevron’s Kern River Oil Field near Bakersfield is one of the largest oil fields in California. The state’s climate policies have helped reduce gasoline demand by more than 15 percent over the past decade.

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Mark Ralston

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AFP via Getty Images

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All of this helps explain the showdown between the leading Democrats in the governor’s race, who are each trying to find a lane in a field that at one time included more than 50 candidates.

Becerra has given lip service to clean energy, but many public statements suggest a friendliness toward oil producers. As attorney general, he initiated a few lawsuits against petroleum companies, and supported other state climate lawsuits, but punted on major investigations. He has focused his gubernatorial campaign on vows to fight Donald Trump and protect healthcare, and has made controversial promises to freeze utility and insurance rates. On decarbonization, he has noted that “climate action only succeeds if it is affordable, reliable, and fair.”

After the chaos of the early primary, many oil producers have decided that Becerra is their candidate. Chevron last month contributed the maximum allowable amount of $39,200 to his campaign, the first time in a decade it has backed a gubernatorial candidate. Last week, the company contributed another $500,000 to an independent political committee supporting Becerra. California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest driller, also gave $500,000 to a Becerra committee. And gas companies like Sempra are among the donors to an anti-Steyer political committee that has raised more than $24 million.

Steyer, meanwhile, has made attacking Big Oil the focus of his campaign, as it was during his 2020 presidential run. He says he would lower gas prices by activating the refining profit cap that Newsom has declined to use, investigating what is causing high gas prices (something the state has already done), and taxing private jet fuel. When refineries “inevitably” close, he says he will stockpile an oil reserve and import more refined fuel for as long as California needs it.

Steyer has also had to address his own fossil fuel ties. The hedge fund he founded, Farallon Capital, remains a major player in coal power finance abroad, including in Indonesia and Australia. Steyer still holds a stake in the firm, which he left in 2012, but his campaign says he no longer receives dividends from its fossil fuel investments.

California uses a “jungle primary” in which the top two candidates advance to the general election, regardless of party. The latest poll shows Becerra essentially tied with former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, with Steyer trailing at around 15 percent. The most likely outcome is that one of Becerra or Steyer will make it to the general election. (The other Democrats, including Porter and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, trail behind in the double digits.)

Railing against Big Oil has long proven to be good politics in California. But in the wake of Trump’s second election victory, Democrats have sought to downplay climate issues and focus instead on affordability. The question in the governor’s race is how best to achieve that in the long run. Is it better to use a bully pulpit against companies like Chevron in an effort to break their market power, or conciliate them in the hope that they don’t flee?

Mike Madrid, a veteran California political operative, believes Becerra’s approach will resonate more with the young and Latinos, both of whom often decide statewide elections.

“This attack on Chevron, it works for the base Steyer already has,” he said. “Young Latino working-class men are the demographic most affected by gas prices. Do you think they’re saying we need to get rid of Chevron? Of course not.”

Steyer’s campaign may not get him over the line in the primary, but he has at least been consistent. In a 2013 blog post for this very publication, he celebrated the result of the Virginia governor’s race, where a climate-focused Democrat beat a fossil-fuel friendly Republican with help from Steyer’s own war chest.

“A new political dynamic is emerging,” he wrote at the time. “Climate change is a winner, not a loser,” and is “no longer electoral Kryptonite.”

If Chevron has its way, next week’s primary results will prove otherwise.

California foster youth and children who have lost a parent to COVID can now apply for a trust fund to help them begin their adult lives.

The Hope, Opportunity, Perseverance and Empowerment (HOPE) program, created by the state Legislature in 2022, will invest $3,000 per child in a trust fund that they can access when they are 18. About 56,000 children could benefit from this program, according to a state press release.

“For California’s most vulnerable children, early financial support can help counter the long-term impacts of poverty and instability, and create a foundation for long-term financial security,” said California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, who serves as chair of HOPE. “HOPE is designed to provide that equitable access and make a lasting impact.”

Children who have spent at least 18 months in foster care or have had family reunification services terminated, and children who have lost a parent or primary caregiver to COVID can apply for funds at hopeaccount.ca.gov.

For more information, contact HopeForChildren@treasurer.ca.gov.