Drivers, hoteliers and medical professionals in Tijuana are possibly abusing a fast lane pass originally meant for people with medical issues to bypass hours-long border traffic at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, a recent city investigation found.

Each year, millions of Americans cross into Baja California to undergo weight loss surgery, visit the dentist or have blood work done at a fraction of the U.S. cost. The number has nearly tripled in recent years with 800,000 medical tourists in 2014 to 2.4 million in 2018.

A special medical “Fast Lane” program opened in 2011 to allow the growing number of U.S. patients of registered Mexican doctors to pass through the San Ysidro border by crossing in a special fast lane and avoiding the notoriously long border waits.

The “Fast Lane” pass is a single-use pass, available in medical offices, and as revealed in the city’s investigation, also offered to guests at many hotel resorts and restaurants. It allows drivers in Tijuana to quickly jump to the front of the line when approaching the San Ysidro Port of Entry to cross into the United States.


When the “medical lane” or the Fast Lane first opened, the passes were only available at doctors and dentist offices to patients who came to Tijuana for medical procedures, city officials said.

Tijuana Police department liaison officer Alonzo Gastelum Bojorquez showed one of the medical permits given to patients by Tijuana medical professionals that allows them to go to the front of the line waiting to cross in to the United State on Wednesday, October 15, 2019. (John Gibbins/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The Tijuana city audit found that about five years ago, the passes were modified from “medical passes” to “medical and tourism passes” that could allow people who came to Tijuana solely for tourism, not related to any medical issues, to also jump to the front of the line and quickly return to the United States.

Hotels and resorts began purchasing them from the city to distribute among their special guests. The amount of passes medical professionals gave out also sharply increased, according to Tijuana city officials.


Arturo González, the new mayor of Tijuana, said the system is being abused.

He said the city investigation found some medical offices were giving out up to 9,000 passes for the medical lane during a three-month period.

“What doctor serves nine thousand people in just three months?” asked González, who took office as mayor on Oct. 1.

Some Tijuana and Baja California tourism sites list places a visitor can obtain a fast pass, such as Rosarito Beach Hotel, Ensenada’s Bajamar Ocean Front Golf Resort & Pro Shop and the Dali Suites in Playas de Tijuana.


Medical offices sometimes include hotel stays as part of an all-inclusive packages for elective medical procedures. Some hotels in Tijuana offer recovery services to people who travel to Baja California for medical treatments. These services can include a recovery nurse, medications, special diet requirements and an escort, who uses the the Fast Lane passes, to drive patients back across the border.

The city’s recent investigation also found the passes were being illegally resold on the internet, and that the city’s own online system for selling the passes had issues, such as people fraudulently entering information as a business to purchase stacks of passes.

Tijuana’s Secretary of Economic Development Arturo Pérez Behr said there were 288,000 fast lane passes issued in 2018, of which he said he believed 90 percent were issued for medical reasons.

Behr said another issue revealed by the city’s investigation was that doctors and dentists were selling the passes, rather than providing them to their patients for free.


“What we don’t want is the passes being bought here and then resold more expensively elsewhere,” said Behr.

Medical professionals are supposed to purchase the passes from the city, but give them to their patients and clients for free, Behr said. They are not meant to be resold, he said, but the city’s recent audit found the passes are being resold, sometimes changing hands several times and for increasingly high profits, he said.

Behr said the city is considering separating the tourism passes from the medical passes to have more order over the amount obtained by medical offices versus how many are sold to hotels and restaurants.

He said the city’s audit was prompted by the change in administration, which took place Oct. 1.


“When a new government arrives, then we are reviewing what is there? We do not know the system. We have to review it. And well, we did a review to have more control over the issue,” he said. “Right now, we’re restructuring the system, so we have more strict control of the use of the Fast Lane passes.”

How strictly the city government decides to monitor the program could become a balancing act between restoring order without negatively impacting the city’s growing medical tourism industry. That industry has an economic spillover into Baja California of approximately $785 million, according to state tourism officials.

“We are going to look for it to work again for the purposes that it was created,” said González, the mayor of Tijuana.

Drivers waiting in the line to cross back into the United States on Thursday had mixed feelings about the potential changes prompted by the city’s audit.


“It would not be worth it to me to come down here if I had to wait in a three-hour line every time to get back across,” said driver Lorelei Engerer.

Engerer was driving through the medical lane Thursday after visiting her dentist in Tijuana where she has nearly completed about $5,000 worth of dental work during the past five years.

She said, earlier this month, she waited several hours to cross when the Fast Lane was briefly shut down as the city conducted their audit.

“That day they shut it down, I was stressing hard. I was like ‘There goes my whole day,’” she said.


But she also said the recent misuse has caused the lane to get so backed up at times the wait is longer than in normal lanes.

Another man, who works in a local medical clinic in Tijuana, said traffic delays during the city’s audit caused at least one of the patients he shuttles back-and-forth across the border to miss her flight home earlier this month.

Cars made their way through the “medical lane” at the border that allows patients being seen by Tijuana medical professionals to go to the front of the line of cars waiting to cross in to the United State on Wednesday, October 15, 2019. (John Gibbins/The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Driver Ronnie Hinojosa said Thursday he thinks the Fast Lane is good for the economy on both sides of the border and over-regulation could be damaging.


“Because you get people from Wyoming or Texas and they’ll come to California; they’ll stay in a hotel, you know so that’s business ... then they’ll cross over, get their teeth fixed, they go back and they’re spending money in San Diego and in Tijuana, so it benefits both cities,” said Hinojosa.

Jorge Felix, 54, who lives in San Diego, said he regularly takes his 85-year-old mother Amalia to the doctor.

Felix said he resents people who misuse the lane.

“She has medical issues. I don’t know how we would get her to her medical appointments if we didn’t have it,” he said.

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