SAN DIEGO — Thirty years ago, when Jerry Sanders was a captain in the San Diego Police Department, a long stretch of the nation’s southern border was marked by a waist-high cord. International pickup soccer games ended at dusk when the Mexicans ducked back under and went home.

Sanders carried this image with him as the city’s police chief and then as mayor. Now head of the region’s Chamber of Commerce, Sanders is disturbed by the national discussion about the border, especially Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s insistence on labeling Mexican migrants as drug dealers and rapists.

“There’s no boogeyman on the south side of the border. We know that,” said Sanders, 65. “There’s our families on the south side.”

While Trump and other Republican presidential candidates push for a giant wall between the United States and Mexico, San Diego is literally building a bridge. In December, an international group of developers, which includes real estate magnate Sam Zell, plans to open a pedestrian walkway that bypasses the regular U.S. border crossings and directly connects San Diego to Tijuana’s international airport.

Meanwhile, all five members of San Diego’s congressional delegation, including stalwart Republican Reps. Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter, have successfully advocated for the $500 million in additional funds needed to expand the main border crossing. And the city’s new mayor, Kevin Faulconer (R), traveled to Tijuana during his first week in office in 2014 and has called for comprehensive immigration reform.

“It’s beyond politics,” Faulconer said. “It’s about where we are in the world.”

Where San Diego is, geographically and philosophically, may best be explained by one number: 59 million. That’s how many people traveled back and forth last year at the main checkpoint, making the city home to the busiest – and most congested – border crossing in the Western Hemisphere.

All told, the study found, cross-border commerce brings $6 billion a year into the region, but congestion at the border steals another $7 billion and costs the region as many as 62,000 jobs.

“When you remove the social debate and it’s just an economic debate, it’s hard to argue against that,” Sanders said.

To help the flow of traffic, the federal government in 2009 began expanding the region’s main border crossing, an effort that would add dozens of automobile and pedestrian lanes while making it more efficient for Homeland Security agents to check people coming into the country. The problem was that the $741 million project was funded in three phases and the last two chunks totaling a half-billion dollars weren’t in the federal budget.

By late 2013, one of the remaining phases had the support of President Obama and the Senate, but not the GOP-controlled House. San Diego’s House Democrats turned to their Republican counterpart, Issa, for help.

“Darrell was the guy who took the message to the Republican side,” said Rep. Scott Peters, a Democratic member of the San Diego delegation.

The funding also won the support of Hunter, San Diego’s most prominent immigration hawk. It made the final version of the budget and got the president’s signature in January last year. Money for the final phase was approved shortly after that. Construction on the border crossing is scheduled to be completed by fall 2019.

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