Chicken Soup for the Souls: Volunteers Find Border Zone 'A Little Apocalyptic'

Denise McEwan scooped out homemade chicken soup, adding rice. Her wife, Molly Quillin-McEwan, put cookies and pastries in plastic bags.

From the back of a pickup truck, they did what they could Wednesday evening to relieve the hunger of hundreds of asylum-seekers camped between the primary and secondary border fences in San Ysidro.

In dozens of half-filled paper cups, the soup was taken to a Hajib-wearing woman on the other side of the bollards, who handed them to fellow migrants.

Denise, 63, and ICU nurse Molly, 41, of Southeast San Diego were among a few good Samaritans who found their way to the parking lot at the end of a bumpy asphalt and dirt Monument Road (off Dairy Mart Road).

Soon their pot was empty. So they bagged up their remaining vanilla sandwich cookies and, with water bottles, filled outstretched hands.

Local attorney John Zryd and his girlfriend, 33-year-old Edith Marquez, joined Pedro Rios and Adriana Jasso of the American Friends Service Committee in distributing items.

Zryd and Marquez brought 15 small rolled-up blankets from Ikea and dozens of brown-bag meals of Costco items.

"We came out here not knowing what to expect," Zryd said, calling the situation much more dire than anticipated.

Wife and I at border, where she's taking pictures and I’m babysitting phone from Senegal asylum-seeker, charging up. Second of several. So sue me. pic.twitter.com/7bh930liLA

"People seem a little apocalyptic on the other side there. They’re all fighting (for the handouts). It seems like anything could help down here at this point," he said.

Rios took turns speaking to camera crews that outnumbered volunteers 10-to-1.

He called such ad hoc volunteers wonderful.

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"I think it shows that people really believe that those seeking asylum should be welcomed with dignity and not treated in a way that's inhumane," Rios said.

But he cautioned that such help be coordinated, "so that we’re able to provide items in a respectful way and we prioritize children first and make sure that everyone's able to get some food or water."

Migrants from around the world — including women from Vietnam and Senegal who asked us to charge their cell phones — used black trash bags to build tents. Others had Mylar blankets to shield against the coming night's cold.

A day before the end of immigration-blocking Title 42, Rios of the AFSC said the immediate need was for the asylum-seekers to be taken away from the international zone and given shelter, food and water.

He noted an Amazon registry site where people could buy other items for the migrants. (Phone charging is still needed for the sake of using app to apply for asylum.)

Denise McEwan told of seeing a young girl crying.

"I just knelt down and cried wth her," she said. "I didn't know what else to do."

The retired tile contractor said she didn't know how to reach the area at first — spending two hours Tuesday looking for the spot.

A Border Patrol agent didn't want to help her, McEwan said. Finally a gentleman at a border park told her how to find the camp zone.

"I’m disgraced to be an American," she said. "America is supposed to be the land of the free, and these people aren't free. This land doesn't belong to me or you. It belongs to everybody."

She felt a special pain for the kids across the bollard fence.

"These children … are just sobbing because they don't understand what's happening right now. … They’re probably thinking: Why am I such a bad person that I’m not allowed to go over there?"

McEwan added: "There's nothing wrong with these people. They’re no different than you and I. They’re human beings."

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