Border Crossings for Dental Trips: Live Wait Times and Opening Hours
Written by Michael Seutin,
founder — former nurse, researching dental pricing abroad.
Wait times below are read live from US Customs and Border Protection each time this page loads, for the crossings that serve the Mexican cities in our directory. We publish CBP's reading and CBP's timestamp — we do not publish an average, an estimate, or a number somebody reported once.
live crossing status
| crossing | serves | hours | car lanes | on foot |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andrade | Los Algodones | 6 am-10 pm | no delay · 2 min | no delay · 0 min |
| San Ysidro | Tijuana | 24 hrs/day | delay · 115 min | delay · 30 min |
| San Ysidro · PedWest | Tijuana | 6 am-2 pm | not reporting right now | |
| Otay Mesa · Passenger | Tijuana | 24 hrs/day | delay · 110 min | delay · 30 min |
Read live from US Customs and Border Protection. Each port carries CBP's own update stamp — Andrade: At 8:00 am PDT — San Ysidro: At 9:00 am PDT — San Ysidro PedWest: At 9:00 am PDT — Otay Mesa Passenger: At 10:00 am PDT. Fetched 27 August 2026, 17:04 UTC. We publish CBP's reading, never an average or an estimate.
the opening hours matter more than the wait
Andrade — the crossing for Los Algodones, the densest dental town on the border — does not run 24 hours. CBP publishes its hours as 6am to 10pm. For a day trip that is the real constraint: a late appointment, a delayed procedure or a lab wait can put you on the wrong side of a closed port. San Ysidro and Otay Mesa's passenger lanes run 24 hours, so a Tijuana trip has slack that a Los Algodones trip does not. The live hours for each crossing are in the table above, straight from CBP.
pedestrian and vehicle lanes are different queues
CBP reports them separately and they diverge sharply — walking back can be far quicker than driving back, or the reverse, at the same port on the same afternoon. This is the practical reason many Los Algodones patients park on the US side and walk across. Read the row for the lane you will actually be in, not the port's headline number.
what a reported delay does and does not tell you
CBP's figure is the wait at the moment of its last update, and the update stamp is shown beside each reading. It is not a forecast. A port that shows "Update Pending" has not reported recently and we print that rather than substituting a guess. Closed ports report nothing at all, which is why a closed crossing shows its hours and no wait — an empty cell there means no data, never a clear road.
this page is Mexico-only, on purpose
Cancún and the Turkish cities are fly-to destinations with no land crossing, so there is nothing here for them and inventing a section would be padding. If you are flying, the question that actually changes your plan is how many trips the treatment takes — that is the next page.
common questions
What time does the Los Algodones border crossing close?
CBP publishes the Andrade port of entry, which serves Los Algodones, as operating 6am to 10pm — not 24 hours. The live hours and current status are shown in the table on this page, read directly from CBP. Plan appointments so a delay does not leave you on the Mexican side after closing.
Is it faster to walk or drive back across the border?
It depends on the port and the hour, which is why CBP reports pedestrian and passenger-vehicle lanes as separate figures and why both are shown here. Many Los Algodones patients park on the US side and walk, but check the live rows for the crossing you are using rather than assuming.
Where do these border wait times come from?
Directly from US Customs and Border Protection's public border wait times feed, fetched when the page loads and cached briefly. Each row carries CBP's own update timestamp. We publish no estimated or averaged wait times.
the rest of the trip
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sources
Nothing on this page is medical, legal or immigration advice — it's consumer research. We report what an official source publishes and when we read it.