The father and daughter who drowned at the border dove into the river in desperation
Valeria is much shorter than her father. But face down in a muddy Rio Grande riverbank, her head is level with his, and her thin arm wraps around his neck as if they embraced one last time as they drowned.
Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month old daughter, both Salvadoran migrants, were swept away in the river waters in a last-ditch attempt to reach Brownsville, Tex., on Monday.
A photo of their bodies among matted reeds was published by the Mexican newspaper La Jornada and later by the Associated Press, shocking the world in a viscerally clear moment of desperation and reminiscent of a photograph showing a 3-year-old Syrian boy who lay drowned on a calm Mediterranean shore.
Martínez and his daughter were met by twin disasters: fast-moving waters and an asylum system unprepared for the crush of Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty.
The family was unable to present themselves to immigration authorities to claim asylum and instead braved the floodwaters to reach the United States, wrote Julia Le Duc, the La Jornada reporter.
Martínez sat down his daughter on the U.S. side of the river and doubled back for his wife, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, Le Duc wrote. But the girl watching from the river’s edge jumped into the river after her father. He reached her, but the raging current took them under.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-father-and-daughter-who-drowned-at-the-border-dove-into-the-river-in-desperation/ar-AADsvHZ?li=BBnb7Kz
= new reply since forum marked as read
