Silvana Alaníz, owner of the tiny El Rincón restaurant in San Ysidro, works from dawn to dusk alongside her entire immediate family. Even her 10-year-old daughter helps serve the clientele, who often wait in lines that wrap around the block for Alaníz’s locally famous menudo.

“We have five kids, and they all cook,” she laughed. “They all help here. They spend their summer days in this restaurant. I think that’s one of the reasons we’ve been surviving.”

But the restaurant supports not just her family in San Ysidro. Every month, Alaníz, 43, also sends money home to her father in Mexico.

The COVID-19 pandemic has slammed many of the immigrants who bused tables, picked crops and stood shoulder to shoulder in factories. But many have kept working in what are considered essential — if risky — jobs. And through the summer, Mexican immigrants like Alaníz living in the United States sent home record sums of money to their families, defying predictions that so-called remittances would plummet.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.