A pursuit that began in Jurupa Valley Wednesday evening stretched nearly 120 miles down the state before ending near the San Ysidro Port of Entry, where gunfire erupted and the border crossing briefly shut its gates. Riverside County sheriff's deputies started chasing a stolen vehicle out of the Jurupa Valley area at around 6:46 p.m., and the pursuit didn't stop until it reached the edge of the country.
According to NBC San Diego, deputies pursued the driver south onto Interstate 5, crossing from Riverside County into San Diego County before the chase finally came to a halt in San Ysidro. Patch reported that the Riverside County Sheriff's Department said the chase began in Jurupa Valley shortly before 7 p.m., a timeline that lines up closely with the earlier reported start time. Law enforcement arrested the suspect near the border, though NBC San Diego reported that the suspect's condition had not been confirmed.
Shooting Reported Near the Border Crossing
San Diego police were investigating a shooting near the U.S.-Mexico border that started as the Riverside County pursuit, the station's report states. CBS News outlet CBS LA reported that California Highway Patrol said the chase ended in San Ysidro after Border Patrol agents shot at the suspect, while whether the driver was actually struck by gunfire remains unclear. The outlet also reported that California Highway Patrol assisted deputies throughout the pursuit as it crossed county lines.
Neither the CHP nor the Riverside County Sheriff's Department would confirm reports circulating on social media about gunfire at the border, and Patch said it had been unable to verify those reports independently. Riverside County sheriff's Lt. Deirdre Vickers told the outlet that no sheriff's deputies were involved in a shooting or injured during the incident, drawing a clear line between the actions of her department's deputies and whatever happened once the chase reached federal jurisdiction at the border.
Border Crossing Shuts Down, Traffic Diverted
The San Ysidro Port of Entry closed shortly after the shooting, and CHP officers diverted all traffic east to Otay Mesa while CHP closed roads near San Ysidro, per CBS LA's reporting. NBC San Diego reported that California Highway Patrol closed the port of entry for an unknown duration, and the same outlet's report did not specify when normal operations resumed. Patch, for its part, said CHP confirmed the closure and traffic diversion were still ongoing when the outlet checked at 9 p.m.
It isn't the first time gunfire has broken out at a Southern California border crossing this year. In August 2025, three federal officers fired at a 59-year-old driver who allegedly sped through secondary inspection at the Otay Mesa crossing, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. In that earlier case, the driver was not struck by gunfire but suffered minor injuries from glass after the windshield was shot, and the Otay Mesa crossing itself remained open to traffic during the investigation. Homeland Security Investigations officials said at the time they would conduct an administrative investigation into the officers' discharge of their weapons.
Federal Use-of-Force Standards
U.S. Customs and Border Protection's own published guidance states that the agency has authority to use force up to and including deadly force, and that its documents establish minimum policy standards for when agents may do so. The agency's use-of-force handbook, posted on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website, does not spell out the specific circumstances that justify deadly force in the excerpt reviewed for this report. A separate CBP review reportedly examined 15 cases in which agents fired at or into vehicles, though that detail comes from a limited search-result snippet of a longer report.
What remains unresolved is whether the suspect in Wednesday's pursuit was hit by gunfire, how long the San Ysidro crossing stayed closed, and which agency's agents fired near the border. Those questions sit at the center of an incident that, for now, has been confirmed mainly through conflicting and partial accounts from the agencies involved.
