Grant Spotts’ family came to Dulzura in the 1880s, searching for water and a home in the rural southeast San Diego County community.
After nearly 150 years, the well on their property continues to deliver.
But around them, Dulzura has transformed in other ways, said Spotts, who owns and operates Dulzura Vineyard & Winery on his family’s land.
“It used to be that you barely saw a truck,” he said. “But things change.”
Once peaceful, starry night skies have become less so. State Route 94, formerly a stage coach road connecting San Diego to Arizona, has become a congested commuter highway. The bustle and drum of the city has slowly crept into Dulzura, whose name translates to “sweetness” in Spanish.
Now, though, something is coming that could quicken the pace of those changes and threaten the country town’s idyllic character.
The U.S. Border Patrol is building a new station in Dulzura, and it’s bringing with it a significant footprint. It will staff up to 400 employees and house up to 130 detainees. Features include a helipad, fuel island, car washing station and dog kennels. And it will serve as the command and control center for a vast surveillance network covering San Diego’s border region.
The new Brown Field Station will replace an aging station in Otay Mesa and provide “much-needed facilities, technologies, and other infrastructure,” a CBP spokesperson said in an email.
It’s a trade-off for residents. Though they have mixed feelings about the project and how it could change their small town’s way of life, they want and appreciate having Border Patrol in the community.
Only 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, Dulzura is often the first town migrants encounter in a dayslong journey after crossing into the country through a large gap in the border wall. Residents see Border Patrol as a necessary response to undocumented migration.
Many of Border Patrol’s more than 230,000 encounters in the San Diego Sector in 2023 happened in the enforcement zone containing Dulzura.
The station represents an often overlooked consequence of increasing immigration enforcement: how the expansion of that enforcement changes the look and feel of communities across the U.S.
“We’re not gonna be Dulzura anymore,” said Lance Hafen, who owns Valentina Vineyards and Winery, and whose grapes grow on several acres of land adjacent to the new station.
“We’re gonna be Brown Field Border Patrol Station, because it’s gonna change the feel and everything in the community.”
The new station is set to be completed in June 2024, four years behind schedule.
“As CBP moves toward completion of the new station, it will continue to strive for a facility that supports effective border security while balancing the needs of the surrounding border community,” the spokesperson said.
Read the full article on inewsource.org.
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