The border fence at Otay Mesa, where a third port of entry is under construction on the U.S. side. Photo: Don Ramey Logan, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Construction is under way on the U.S. side of the long-planned Otay Mesa East Port of Entry, a third San Diego-Tijuana crossing meant to pull commercial and passenger traffic off San Ysidro and the existing Otay Mesa port. Caltrans says work on State Route 11, State Route 125 and State Route 905 leading to the site is complete and that “preliminary construction on the port of entry is currently underway.” SANDAG, which is building the project jointly with Caltrans, says the agencies broke ground in August 2022. The Mexican counterpart, Mesa de Otay II, is part of the same binational plan.
SANDAG describes a new land port that would use newer inspection technology, a four-lane toll road along SR-11 and a commercial vehicle enforcement facility, and it calls the crossing a “relief valve” for the other San Diego ports. Caltrans, citing 2018 figures, said the Otay Mesa and Tecate ports together handled $47.5 billion in bilateral trade that year and that the volume was expected to grow. Clark Construction, a contractor on the job with Guy F. Atkinson Construction, lists a completion date of 2028 and says the buildings will include northbound and southbound inspection, primary and secondary inspection, cargo inspection and an administration headhouse, along with dynamic tolling on the new road.
Published timelines still do not line up on a single opening date. A San Diego Chronicle analysis dated Sept. 20 said SANDAG, in April 2025, discussed a phased opening as early as late 2027, while the agency’s business-case brochure put the opening in early 2028. The Chronicle also reported that a $150 million federal grant, first awarded in September 2022 and finalized in April 2025, anchors the funding, according to SANDAG. BuildSD, in an Oct. 16 project brief, gave a completion window of 2028-2029 and said the Mexican checkpoint was mostly finished by 2024. It also said the U.S. crossing is planned with 12 lanes, seven of them for commercial traffic and five for passenger traffic, a figure that does not appear on the Caltrans or SANDAG overview pages.
Those official pages do not now publish a firm opening date. What they do say is that the roads to the site are built, the port itself is in construction, and the project is meant to cut waits and emissions at a crossing that has been discussed for decades. How close the first lanes come to the late-2027 or 2028 dates cited by SANDAG’s earlier materials will depend on construction on both sides of the line and on the inspection systems that still have to be installed.
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