Journey to freedom

by 8DonCo Tue Jun 25, 2019 8:05 pm

Shocking photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants' border peril

The toddler’s arm was still draped around her father’s neck after bodies were found in the Rio Grande as they sought asylum

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The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico, on Monday. Photograph: Julia Le Duc/AP
The grim reality of the migration crisis unfolding on America’s southern border has been captured in a series of images showing the lifeless bodies of a Salvadoran father and his daughter who drowned as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande into Texas.
The photographs, taken on Monday, show Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 26, and his daughter Valeria, lying face down in shallow water. The 23-month-old toddler’s arm is draped around her father’s neck, suggesting that she was clinging to him in her final moments.
Mexican newspapers compared the photograph to the 2015 image of the 3 year old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi who drowned off the Greek island of Kos – although it remains to be seen if it will have the same impact on America’s fierce immigration debate.
Their bodies were discovered on the bank of the river near Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas, just half a mile (1 kilometer) from an international bridge.
According to Julia Le Duc, a reporter for the newspaper La Jornada, Martínez Ramírez had been unable to present himself to US authorities and request asylum, and decided to swim across the river with his daughter.
He set her on the US bank of the river and started back for his wife, Vanessa Ávalos, but seeing him move away the girl threw herself into the waters. Martínez returned and was able to grab Valeria, but the current swept them both away. The account was based on remarks by Ávalos to police at the scene.
The image underlines the dangers which mostly Central American migrants face in their attempts to escape violence, corruption and poverty at home and find asylum in the United States.

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