Family drownings highlight US migration nightmare

Searing picture of a man and his baby daughter who drowned trying to reach the US highlights perils migrants face.

The bodies of Oscar Martinez and his daughter Valeria. Picture: AFP

The man and his 23-month-old daughter lay face down in shallow water along the bank of the Rio Grande, his black shirt hiked up to his chest with the girl tucked inside. Her arm was draped around his neck, suggesting she clung to him in her final moments.

The searing photograph of the discovery of their bodies on Monday highlights the perils faced by mostly Central American ­migrants fleeing violence and ­poverty and hoping for asylum in the US.

According to journalist Julia Le Duc’s report for Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez — frustrated because the family from El Salvador was unable to present itself to US authorities and request asylum — swam across the river on Sunday with his daughter Valeria.

He set her on the US bank of the river and started back for his wife Tania Vanessa Avalos, but seeing him move away the girl threw herself into the waters. Martinez ­returned and grabbed Valeria, but the current swept them both away.

The account was based on ­remarks by Avalos to police at the scene — “amid tears” and “screams” — Le Duc said.

Details of the incident were confirmed by a Tamaulipas government official and by Martinez’s mother in El Salvador, Rosa ­Ramirez, who spoke to her daughter-in-law by phone.

“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,” Ramirez said “He put her in his shirt, and I imagine he told himself, ‘I’ve come this far’ and ­decided to go with her.”

From the scorching Sonoran Desert to the fast-moving Rio Grande, the 3200km US-Mexico border has long been a deadly crossing between ports of entry. A total of 283 migrant deaths were recorded last year.

Two ­babies, a toddler and a woman were found dead on Sunday, overcome by the sweltering heat; elsewhere three children and an adult from Honduras died in April after their raft capsized on the Rio Grande; and a six-year-old from India was found dead earlier this month in Arizona, where temperatures routinely soar well above 38C.

Tamaulipas immigration and civil defence officials have toured shelters beginning weeks ago to warn against attempting to cross the river.

Ramirez said her son, 25, and his family left El Salvador on April 3 and spent about two months at a shelter in Tapachula, near Mexico’s border with Guatemala. “I begged them not to go, but he wanted to scrape together money to build a home,” Ramirez said. “They hoped to be there a few years and save up for the house.”

El Salvador’s Foreign Ministry said it was working to help the family, including Avalos, who was at a border migrant shelter following the drownings.

The photo recalls the 2015 image of a three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean near Turkey, though it ­remains to be seen whether it may have the same impact in focusing international attention on ­migration to the US.

“I was drawn to the girl’s arm on her father,” journalist Le Duc said as she described arriving at the scene. “It was something that moved me in the extreme because it reflects that until her last breath, she was joined to him not only by the shirt but also in that embrace in which they passed together into death.’’

“It’s a horrifying image,” said Maureen Meyer, a specialist on immigration at the Washington Office on Latin America, which advocates for human rights in the ­region. “And I think it speaks so clearly to the real risks of these US programs that are either returning people back to Mexico seeking asylum or in this case limiting how many people can enter the US every day.”

The Trump administration has faced a barrage of criticism in ­recent days over its migration policy, highlighted by conditions ­inside a US government detention centre in Clint, Texas: inadequate food, lack of medical care, no soap, and older children trying to care for toddlers.

In one case reported, lawyers said a two-year-old boy without a nappy was being watched by older children. Several youngsters had the flu. Many were separated from extended family members such as aunts and uncles who brought them to the border; others were teenage mothers with babies.

The acting head of US Customs and Border Protection, John Sanders, resigned yesterday amid the uproar over the conditions, deepening the sense of crisis and adding to the rapid turnover inside the agencies responsible for enforcing Donald Trump’s hardline immigration priorities.

The US’s “metering” policy has dramatically reduced the number of migrants who are allowed to ­request asylum, leaving many ­migrant shelters overflowing on the Mexican side, where cartels hold sway over much of places such as Tamaulipas and have been known to kidnap and kill migrants.

AP