San Diego’s new Border Patrol chief says agents will work more in county’s interior

With illegal border crossings at their lowest in decades, the public can expect to see more Border Patrol agents stepping up their presence within the interior of the region, the new chief of the agency’s San Diego sector said Friday.

Justin De La Torre takes the reins of the sector where he began his own career. It’s a border that looks very different now.

Last month, the number of migrant encounters along the San Diego sector was 960, which is a 93% decrease compared to October 2024. At that time, much of the border agents’ work involved processing people arriving at the border, many of whom were seeking asylum.

With this reduction in numbers as a result of the Trump administration’s policies to crack down on illegal immigration, agents can more proactively patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as farther north into San Diego County communities, he said Friday in a meeting with reporters.

Community groups that closely monitor immigration enforcement operations throughout the county said this week that they have noticed an increased presence of Border Patrol agents working with federal immigration agents in the neighborhoods.

“When we had 900 people a day illegally entering, we did not have the time and the ability to patrol,...