SAN DIEGO — Two vans and a car pulled into the restricted access parking lot by El Chaparral Plaza on the Tijuana side of the San Ysidro Port of Entry a little before noon on Monday.
Parents and their children — 35 asylum seekers in all — got out and gathered their belongings. Many paused to hug or shake hands with the driver of the second van, a pastor who ran the shelter where many of them lived during their time in Tijuana. As they lined up, documents in hand, against the port of entry wall, one Guatemalan woman ran back to hug the pastor one last time.
They zigged and zagged their way up the walkway that would lead them to the place they had been trying to reach in some cases for over a year — U.S. soil — waving and beaming back at the group of advocates who had helped them get there.
