Closed Lukeville border crossing has Puerto Peñasco facing 'catastrophic' economic impact
An immediate exodus of U.S. citizens, a growing list of hotel and condo cancellations, empty restaurant tables and even a canceled toy drive are some of the most immediate consequences felt by the Mexican beach town of Puerto Peñasco in the 10 days since U.S. border officials shut down the Lukeville border crossing.
With ongoing uncertainty about how long the Lukeville Port of Entry in southwestern Arizona will remain closed, those are only the first of many looming, more serious challenges ahead for Puerto Peñasco residents and Arizonans who have close business and family ties in the region.
"Pretty much everything tourist-related is dead, done, like a ghost town. You go into the resorts, there's no cars. This is worse than COVID," said Cindy Lowe, a Tucson woman who lives permanently in Puerto Peñasco.
She invested her life savings into opening a restaurant in the city center called Ole Mole, which has sat mostly empty since the Lukeville border crossing shut down Dec. 4, restricting the most direct route from Phoenix and Tucson to the city also known as Rocky Point.
Salvador Cabrales from Phoenix operates a third-generation boatyard and brokerage on the Sea of Cortez. He has suspended all reservations for watercraft activities until further notice and expects his vacation rental in Puerto Peñasco to sit empty until the port of entry reopens.
The money from the rental and the boatyard pays for the apartment in Phoenix where his wife and two daughters live full-time. Cabrales drives back and forth to spend time with them. But after driving up this past weekend, he said he won't be able to make that trip too often while the Lukeville crossing is closed.
"What used to take me three hours, now I do it in seven hours to go up north," he said. "I came back through Nogales on Sunday, and apart from the eight hours it took me to get back, I had to take roads that have cartel activity."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Dec. 1 that it would close the Lukeville Port of Entry to redirect customs officers stationed there to help U.S. Border Patrol agents process more than 2,500 migrants crossing daily through holes in the border fence just a few hundred yards to the west of the shuttered crossing.
Oscar Palacio Soto is the vice president of tourism for the Puerto Peñasco Chamber of Commerce and of the Mexican Association of Hotels and Motels in Sonora. He said bookings plummeted after the announcement.
December is traditionally a slow season for visitors to the beach city. But hotel and resort occupancy rates sunk from about 25% before Dec. 1 to about 5%, he said. And that does not include bookings made directly with the owners of an estimated 6,000 condos and 3,500 homes in Puerto Peñasco, the majority of which are owned by Arizonans.
Approximately 10,000 Rocky Point residents, roughly one-sixth of the city's population, rely on tourists and visitors to earn a living, said Palacio Soto. Some of the most affected businesses, such as hotels and restaurants, such as Lowe's Ole Mole, have already begun laying off workers.
That has a ripple effect on the entire community.
"You start to see a chain reaction," Palacio Soto said. "Soon enough, I can tell you by the end it'll be felt in the stores where the people who work at the hotels and restaurants shop, the people that live in the neighborhoods, at the bars. They will also see an immediate impact."
As bleak as the situation looks now, it may become even more dire in the weeks to come if the Lukeville Port of Entry remains closed. Christmas and the New Year provide a momentary boost in visitors and reservations to Puerto Peñasco. That probably won't happen this year.
As cash runs out, it will be harder for business owners like Lowe to remain open, or for families like the Cabrales to pay the rent, their mortgage or other expenses.
If the Lukeville closure extends into January, it would be "catastrophic" for Puerto Peñasco, Palacio Soto said.
Given the high degree of uncertainty, Robin Miller, a retiree living south of the border, said she's begun to wonder how else her life will be impacted. She has a real estate business in Rocky Point to supplement her Social Security income. She also worries about how she'll get to medical appointments in Tucson.
"That's my next step, is to call all the different doctors and ask them, 'can you do it over the phone or the Zoom?' But some of them won't," Miller said.
Customs and Border Protection urges visitors to cross the border through San Luis or Nogales, but there are extra hurdles to get to Puerto Peñasco this time of the year, aside from two more hours of driving each way.
Winter is the peak growing season for leafy greens in Yuma County, and the wait times to cross the border back to Arizona through San Luis right now are at their longest.
Equally off-putting to people like Miller and Cabrales is the length of the drive on the Mexican side. The now-shuttered route from Sonoyta, the border city across from Lukeville, to Puerto Peñasco takes only one hour. It is at least a four-hour minimum on the alternate roads in Sonora that may not be familiar to most visitors.
The drive from Nogales to Puerto Peñasco, for example, takes about five hours. But drivers must pass through Caborca and Altar, two cities experiencing cartel violence as rival groups battle for control of lucrative smuggling routes into Arizona, including the one used by smugglers now to drop off hundreds of migrants every day near the Lukeville crossing.
Hector Vasquez del Mercado, the director of Las Palomas Beach and Golf Resort in Rocky Point and former president of the city's convention and visitors bureau, said the Mexican government needs to step up to reduce the number of migrants dropped off near Lukeville.
He believes that until the number of migrants crossing daily begins to drop, there's little chance Lukeville will reopen. Sonora Gov. Alfonso Durazo also called on the federal government in Mexico to send more resources to the region.
"That is where we have been focused," Vasquez del Mercado said. "In pressing and saying that it's not possible that in this case human traffickers are being favored over the people who earn their living honestly."
Have any news tips or story ideas about immigration in the Southwest? Reach the reporter at rafael.carranza@arizonarepublic.com, or follow him on X (formerly Twitter): @RafaelCarranza.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Lukeville closure strains ties between Rocky Point and Arizona
