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The Story Behind the Photo of Two Migrants Found Dead in the Rio Grande A Photo Captures the Pathos of Migrants Who Risked It All
(about 2 hours later)
Crossing the Rio Grande has long been one of the many deadly hurdles migrants face as they try to enter the United States. MEXICO CITY — The father and daughter lie face down in the muddy water along the banks of the Rio Grande, her tiny head tucked inside of his T-shirt, an arm draped over his neck.
But a photograph published online Monday by a Mexican newspaper served as a jarring reminder of the journey’s perils: the bodies of a man and his 23-month-old daughter floating face down on the banks near Brownsville, Tex. The girl is tucked under his shirt, her arm wrapped around his neck. The portrait of desperation was captured on Monday by the journalist Julia Le Duc, in the hours after Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez drowned with his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, as they tried to cross from Mexico to the United States.
The photograph, captured by the reporter Julia Le Duc and published on La Jornada’s front page on Tuesday, drew widespread attention as an image of yet another death along the border at a time when migrants, particularly families from Central America, have arrived in increasing numbers. The image represents a poignant distillation of the perilous journey hundreds of thousands of migrants face on their passage north to the United States, and the tragic consequences that often go unseen in the loud and caustic debate over border policy.
“I know our hearts can’t take more,” Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, said on Twitter. “We must keep fighting for the dignity & humanity of these vulnerable souls.” It recalled other poignant and sometimes disturbing photos that have galvanized public attention in the past to the horrors of war and the acute suffering of individual refugees and migrants — personal stories that are often obscured by larger events.
She added, “Maintain your humanity in the face of horror.” Like the 1993 photo of a starving toddler and a nearby vulture in Sudan or the shot in 1972 of a 9-year-old in South Vietnam running naked, screaming from burning napalm, the image of a single father and his young child washed up on the river shore had the potential to prick the public conscience.
When asked about the photograph, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said it was “very regrettable that this would happen,” according to The Associated Press. As the photo ricocheted around social media on Tuesday, Democrats in the House were moving toward a late-night vote on an emergency $4.5 billion humanitarian aid bill to address the plight of migrants at the border.
“We have always denounced that as there is more rejection in the United States, there are people who lose their lives in the desert or crossing” the river, he said on Tuesday. Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas and the chairman of the Hispanic Caucus, grew visibly emotional as he discussed the photograph in Washington. He said he hoped that it would make a difference among lawmakers and the broader American public.
Some used the image as a rallying cry for immigration reform. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, said people should not look away from the photograph. “It’s very hard to see that photograph,” Mr. Castro said. “It’s our version of the Syrian photograph — of the three-year-old boy on the beach, dead. That’s what it is.’’
“These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s inhumane and immoral immigration policy,” he said on Twitter. “This is being done in our name.” The young family from El Salvador — Mr. Martinez, 25, Valeria and her mother, Tania Vanessa Avalos — arrived last weekend in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, hoping to apply for asylum in the United States.
La Jornada, a newspaper based in Mexico City, identified the migrants in the photograph as Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria, from El Salvador. But the international bridge was closed until Monday, officials told them, and as they walked along the banks of the river, the water appeared manageable.
Mr. Martínez’s wife, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, told La Jornada that they had been waiting at a camp in Matamoros, on the Mexican side of a bridge that connects the city to Brownsville, for two months to present their asylum claims to United States officials. On Sunday, they decided to cross the river on their own. Mr. Martinez swam first with Valeria and deposited the girl on the banks of the American side before turning back to help his wife, according to testimony Ms. Le Duc overheard at the scene on Sunday.
Mr. Martínez had taken his daughter in his arms, crossed the river and put her on dry land, Ms. Ávalos said. When Mr. Martínez went back for his wife, she said, Valeria jumped into the water. When he tried to rescue her, both were pulled under. But the girl grew frightened and dove back into the water after him. He returned for the little girl, tucking her inside his T-shirt as the current swept them away.
Ms. Ávalos said that she alerted the authorities, and that a search began. The authorities found the bodies about 12 hours later, about 550 yards away from where they sank. On Monday, their bodies were recovered by Mexican authorities a few hundred yards from where they were swept downstream, fixed in the same haunting embrace.
Migrants from Central America have crossed the border by the thousands in recent months, overwhelming Border Patrol agents, nonprofit groups and local officials. When asked about the photograph, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said on Tuesday that it was “very regrettable that this would happen,” The Associated Press reported.
The surge has shown how deadly the journey can be, both in the Rio Grande and beyond. Harsh desert conditions and a lack of water spur dehydration or heat stroke. “We have always denounced that as there is more rejection in the United States, there are people who lose their lives in the desert or crossing” the river, he said.
Many migrants cannot swim, and Border Patrol agents said this month that they were pulling dozens of migrants, including children, from the river almost every day. Recent weeks have brought home the dangers along the border, though none quite as graphically as the death of Mr. Ramirez and Valeria.
From Oct. 1 to early June, Border Patrol agents rescued at least 315 migrants from a 209-mile stretch of the Rio Grande — up from 12 migrants the year before. On Sunday, two babies, a child and woman were found dead in the Rio Grande Valley, overcome by the searing heat. A toddler from India was found dead in Arizona earlier this month.
But there have also been tragedies. And three children and an adult from Honduras perished when their raft overturned two months ago while crossing the Rio Grande.
In May, a 10-month-old boy died after a raft carrying migrants overturned on the Rio Grande. Deterrence has been a favored strategy among American officials seeking to stem the tide of migration, even before President Trump took office.
In Hidalgo County, on the border, sheriff’s officials reported 27 migrant waterway deaths last year, an increase from 13 in 2017. In 2014, President Barack Obama pressed Mexico to do more after tens of thousands of unaccompanied children turned up along the southern border searching for loved ones in the United States.
Detentions in Mexico soared under the so-called Plan Southern Border.
But Mr. Trump, from the outset of his election campaign, has made a crackdown on illegal immigration a centerpiece of his presidency.
His administration has sought to criminalize those entering the United States illegally, separate parents from their children and drastically slow down the ability of migrants to apply for asylum in the United States.
More recently, his administration has imposed a plan to send thousands of asylum seekers back to Mexico to await their court proceedings.
Under sustained pressure from Mr. Trump, Mexico has been stepping up its own migration enforcement in recent months.
This effort accelerated in the past two weeks as part of a deal that the López Obrador administration struck with Washington to thwart potentially crippling tariffs.
As of Monday, the Mexican government had deployed more than 20,000 security forces to the southern and northern borders to try to impede the passage of undocumented migrants toward the United States, officials said.
But human rights experts, immigrants’ advocates and security analysts warned that the mobilization could drive migrants to resort to more dangerous routes in their effort to reach the United States.
For all the hard-line policies, hundreds of thousands of migrants continue to embark on the dangerous journey to the United States from Central America and elsewhere.
But for every migrant who chooses to take the journey, whether on foot, packed into shipping containers or on the top of trains, the fear of what lies behind outweighs that which lies ahead.
Some are fleeing gangs that cripple the region and kill wantonly. Others are seeking an economic lifeline.
Such was the case with Mr. Martinez and his wife, who left El Salvador in early April intent on starting fresh in the United States, according to Jorge Beltran, a reporter for El Diario de Hoy in El Salvador who interviewed some of the couple’s relatives.
“They went for the American dream,” Wendy Joanna Martínez de Romero, said from her home in El Salvador.
Mr. Martinez quit his job at Papa Johns, where he had earned about $350 a month. By then, his wife had already left her job as a cashier at a Chinese restaurant to take care of their daughter.
The couple lived with Mr. Ramirez’s mother in the community of Altavista, a massive housing complex of tiny concrete houses east of San Salvador, according to Mr. Beltran.
Though Altavista is under the control of gangs, the couple was not fleeing from violence, Ms. Ramirez told him. Rather, the grind of surviving as a family on a $10 a day had become unmanageable.
Indeed, members of the family issued a plea to the public on Tuesday, seeking money to help repatriate the bodies of Mr. Martinez and Valeria. The cost was expected to be about $8,000 — an unimaginable sum for the relatives to manage.
Hours later, the government agreed to cover the costs.