Border patrol agents prohibit access to Friendship Park
By Penni Crabtree
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. February 22, 2009

Demonstrators locked arms yesterday when they encountered Border Patrol agents who blocked access to the plaza known as Friendship Park. (Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune) - SOUTH COUNTY — In the end, immigration activists never made it to the site of yesterday's planned demonstration, a plaza dubbed Friendship Park that sits on a bluff overlooking the ocean at Border Field State Park.

For the first time, Border Patrol agents formally sealed off access on the U.S. side to the plaza, for years a popular meeting place on the U.S.-Mexico border for families to visit through the fence.

The Department of Homeland Security announced late last year that it will prohibit all public access to the park where a secondary wall is under construction. Since then, the plaza has become a symbolic touchstone for those who debate border enforcement policies.

Until recently, federal officials had planned to have a gate in the secondary fence that would have allowed people on either side to visit.

“This is a treasured piece of the San Diego landscape where people meet for peaceful reasons,â€