Tijuana Border Rush Mystery: Were The 100 People Demonstrating Or Trying To Cross The Border?

About a quarter-mile west of the San Ysidro port of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, not far from where a fence divides San Diego and Tijuana, more than 100 people rushed a heavily patrolled portion of the border in an apparent attempt to cross illegally. But the intentions of those who participated in the mass action remain a mystery. Over a dozen Border Patrol agents, who said they were pelted with rocks and filled water bottles, dispersed the crowd using pepper spray, rubber bullets and taser shocks. Click here to check out video footage of the incident.

Filmmaker Bryan Chilian told UT-San Diego that while in the midst of filming a documentary about homeless deportees in the Tijuana river, he and his two partners noticed the crowd shouting "¡Viva [Pancho] Villa!" and moving rapidly toward the border, at which point the filmmakers followed with their cameras. Crew member Jesús Guerra Huerta said he didn't recognize any of the participants from the area, even after having spent months there for the documentary. "We tried to figure out who was the leader, but we couldn't," Chilian told the paper on Tuesday. "We couldn't see anyone leading or making signs." The paper wrote that a copy of a leaflet calling for the action spoke of problems in Mexico and said it was organized "with the intention of crossing to the United States, to reunite with our children, families". Bruno Alvarez, 41-year-old deportee and volunteer at a nearby soup kitchen for migrants, told the paper that he'd seen the leaflet days before and that the action "didn't seem well organized".

According to another theory, reported by Tijuana newspaper El Mexico, the action was actually coordinated by the crew of a feature film. The newspaper reported that the participants were recruited in a downtown soup kitchen and told to show up at the border on Sunday afternoon so they could reunite with their families in the U.S., but not informed that the attempted crossing would be a scene in the film. Pedro Rios, director of the San Diego office of the American Friends Service Committee, expressed concern about the prospect. "We don't condone this type of action. It is irresponsible and places people in harm's way," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Similar sorts of "rushes" were common in the 1990s, when migrants would converge on a spot at the border in large numbers -- typically at night, unlike in this instance -- in an attempt to overwhelm Border Patrol agents there. That came to a halt with the launching of "Operation Gatekeeper" in 1994, which saw fences constructed and an 1,000 extra agents deployed near San Diego.

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