Story by Gustavo Solis | Photographs by Omar Ornelas

The Desert Sun

TECATE, Mexico – Javier Alvarado Castillo, a Mexican welder who makes $300 on a good week, admires the work that went into building a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“They did a good job,” said Castillo, noting the high quality materials and the difficulty of building on rugged terrain.

The U.S. did such a fine job that other welders have been known to steal poles from the fence and sell them for cash. Just one can go for $3,000 pesos or $180. For Tecate’s working class, that can add up to three months’ rent, Castillo said.

Tecate and its surrounding suburbs boast a population of 100,000. The city has world-class hotels, fine dining, museums, universities, a brewery that bears the town’s name, and factories from companies like Toyota and Rockwell Automation. Tecate is the only border crossing between Tijuana and Mexicali.

The city is more than 2,000 miles away from Washington D.C., where lawmakers craft immigration policy. While the U.S. presidential election campaign trail has been littered with talk of walls, the people living in this border town believe it is a lost cause.

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Ever since New York businessman Donald Trump announced his bid for presidency, his suggestion of a border wall has made headline news and attracted international attention. Currently there is less than 700 miles of a 10- to 18-foot fence along the nearly 2,000-mile border. Trump has proposed putting a 50-foot concrete wall along 1,000 miles of it.

The idea, along with his anti-establishment brand and habit of speaking off the cuff, have propelled Trump to the top of the delegate count of Republicans seeking the nomination.

To force the Mexican government to pay for it, Trump this week threatened to block undocumented immigrants from sending money back to Mexico. In 2015, Mexicans overseas – both documented and undocumented – sent $24 billion to Mexico, according to The World Bank.

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Two of Mexico’s former presidents and the current president have dismissed the idea of a wall and how to pay for it as “stupid.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wants to add a second fence parallel to existing fences. Both Republican candidates want to increase the size of the border patrol.

“What is being said is in so many ways irrational and illogical,” said Roberto Arjona, the chief executive of a luxury hotel and spa in Tecate. “To quote a former homeland security deputy, when she was asked about the wall she said, ‘you could build a 50 foot wall and they will build a 51 foot ladder.’”

“So to me that is the essence of these absurd comments. I think people that need to cross the border or want to cross the border they’ll find a way to cross the border.”

Arjona runs Rancho La Puerta, a luxury spa retreat that has been voted Travel + Leisure’s best destination spa from 2011 to 2015.

The spa was founded in the 1940s as a place to escape the stresses of urban life and relax in nature. Guests started coming to the Tecate ranch decades before yoga, meditation, and vegan diets were in vogue.

Rancho La Puerta’s 3,000-acre grounds have pools, gardens, hiking paths, a spa and organic farm. Guests are asked to leave their cell phones inside their rooms when they arrive, encouraged to have meals with strangers, and refrain from eating meat and chicken during their stay.

More than 95 percent of the hotel’s guests are American. Running a business so close to the border presents unique challenges.

“It’s complex to say the least,” Arjona said. “We’ve been around for 75 years. We sort of know how it works and every time there is a new regulation, we are quick to adapt to it and to ensure that our guests are not going to have to suffer through all the bureaucracy that’s involved with that process.”

Staff here work to calm visitors’ reservations about travelling to the border. During the height of drug-related violence along the Mexican side of the border, the entire country saw a drop in tourism.

To put guests at ease, the hotel picks them up at the San Diego airport and basically holds their hand until they are in the resort.

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The resort is a bubble within Tecate and is a sign of what Mexico has to offer to the United States. While politicians and presidential hopefuls like to leverage a tough stand of border security for votes, they don’t often know what it’s like to live along the border, Arjona said.

“People in Washington D.C. and people in Mexico City do not get it,” he said. “If you cross the border and ask someone in San Diego about the relationship between Tijuana, Tecate, and San Diego, they’ll tell you that it’s important to the success of their businesses, it’s important to the success of their cultural system. And if you ask the same question in Tecate or Tijuana, they are going to tell you exactly the same.”

“We have a strong dependency between these two sides of the border that has made us successful and any attempt to disrupt that from entities or people who are far away is not good. They need to take the time to understand the dynamics and then, based on that, perhaps make decisions to improve what we have already build.”

Across the border from Tecate in Mexico is California’s own Tecate.

Unlike its Mexican neighbor, American Tecate does not boast spas, universities, or factories. The unincorporated community on the southeast edge of San Diego County has a gas station, a Payless Shoesource, money exchanges, and a post office.

The place is so small that locals from Mexican Tecate refer to it as Tecatito, or little Tecate. It is home to less than 200 people, according to the San Diego Association of Governments.

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“It’s a quiet place,” said resident Ada Garcia, who runs one of the money exchanges.

Garcia moved from Tecate to Tecatito about 20 years ago so that her son could go to school in the United States and learn English.

The move paid off. Her son will graduate from San Diego State University this spring, Garcia said.

After living in Tecatito for so long, Garcia has no plans to move back to Mexico. She opened her small business right on the border, the money exchange that serves as a pit stop for international travelers.

On holiday weekends, people from Tecate flood Garcia’s shop to turn their pesos into dollars to spend on shopping trips to a nearby Walmart or stores closer to San Diego.

Garcia’s clients aren’t exclusively Mexican.

“A lot of Americans stop here to change currency before going to Mexico,” Garcia said. “A little while ago someone from Nebraska was going to La Paz and stopped here before crossing.”

Hearing politicians say they want to build a bigger wall and make it harder for people to cross the border doesn’t sit well with Allan Gomez, who was born in Orange County, moved to Tecate as a child and now works in Tecatito helping his mother run a store.

Gomez, 26, describes the two towns as “brothers” and believes closing off contact will hurt American and Mexican citizens alike.

“It’s weird to hear of a bigger wall or if you’re Mexican you are not going to cross the border,” he said. “They are locking someone’s dream. It’s the Mexican dream. The people who live in Mexico, their dream is to work in the U.S.”

Like many residents of Tecate, Castillo, the 40-year-old welder, moved to town with hopes of eventually moving to the United States. When that didn’t pan out, he decided to stay.

“A lot of people trying to go to the other side, they stay here to live,” Castillo said. “They try once or twice, don’t make it, find a job here and realize it’s better here than the other side, so they stay.”

Castillo has become a sort of unofficial tourist guide. He and his brother rent a house to American visitors through Airbnb for less than $30 a night. Whenever guests want to explore the city, Castillo drives them around in a green Expedition.

He had not heard Trump’s comments about building a wall to keep “criminals” and “rapists” out of the United States. Immigration is not something Castillo thinks of on a daily basis because he now has no plans to move north.

And while the wall doesn’t affect him on a daily basis, it does have a psychological impact, Castillo said.

“What necessity do they have to put a concrete wall 10 meters up,” Castillo said. “We are not animals. Are they trying to protect themselves from lions?”

“We don’t live in a time where cities need to be walled off because of invaders. We live in a time where there are laws and they protect countries from one another.”

Reporter Gustavo Solis can be reached at 760 778 4443 or by email at gustavo.solis@desertsun.com and twitter @journogoose.