The dead bodies of a man and his young daughter lying face down on the bank of the Rio Grande were published on Monday by Mexican newspaper La Jornada and quickly emerged as a heartbreaking symbol of the dangers facing migrants desperately seeking asylum in the United States.
It didn’t take long for Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke to point the finger at the man in the White House:
O’Rourke, who will be participating in the first Democratic presidential debate in Miami on Wednesday night, explained his stance further:
‘As his administration refuses to follow our laws — preventing refugees from presenting themselves for asylum at our ports of entry — they cause families to cross between ports, ensuring greater suffering & death. At the expense of our humanity, not to the benefit of our safety.’
As for the photo, El Salvadoran father Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez was reportedly frustrated because he was unable to present his family to U.S. authorities and request asylum — so he decided to take his daughter, Valeria, and make the dangerous swim across the river.
The two made it across initially, but when Martinez set Valeria on the bank and started to swim back to help his wife, she followed him into the river and the current ultimately swept them both away, according to La Jornada.
Martínez’s mother back in El Salvador, Rosa Ramírez, shared the harrowing details with the Associated Press.
“When the girl jumped in is when he tried to reach her, but when he tried to grab the girl, he went in further … and he couldn’t get out,” she said. “He put her in his shirt, and I imagine he told himself, ‘I’ve come this far’ and decided to go with her.”
A total of 283 migrant deaths were recorded last year along the 2,000 mile border, the AP reported. No death toll has been released this year, but in recent weeks, several people have died attempting the journey amid a brutal heat wave.
“I begged them not to go, but he wanted to scrape together money to build a home,” Ramírez said. “They hoped to be there a few years and save up for the house.”
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