I will give the L.A. Times some credit for going to Tijuana and interviewing her there. You don’t meet any self deported Mexicans in Los Angeles, but there are plenty of them in Tijuana. This one does have a few holes in her story. She claims that she walked through the San Ysidro port of entry in 1999 and none of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents asked her for any kind of identification. That part is B.S. She paid a smuggler.
My daughter was an inspector at San Ysidro in 1999 and darned few snuck past her !!!!