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

Pedro_P

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

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

US border: photo of drowned father and daughter highlights migrants’ peril (DW)
▼ The grim reality of the migration crisis unfolding on America’s southern border has been captured in photographs showing the lifeless bodies of a Salvadoran father and his daughter who drowned as they attempted to cross the Rio Grande into Texas.
The images, 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.
The UN refugee agency compared the photograph to the 2015 image of the three-year-old Syrian boy A lan 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 (1km) from an international bridge.
According to Julia Le Duc, a reporter for La Jornada, Martínez Ramírez had arrived in Matamoros on Sunday, hoping to request asylum from US authorities with his wife, Vanessa Ávalos, and their daughter.
But when he realized that it could be weeks before they were even able to start the asylum process, Martínez decided they should swim across, said Le Duc, who witnessed Ávalos give her account to the police.
“He crossed first with the little girl and he left her on the American side. Then he turned back to get his wife, but the girl went into the water after him. When he went to save her, the current took them both,” Le Duc told the Guardian.

Tania Vanessa Ávalos of El Salvador, center left, is assisted by Mexican authorities after her husband and nearly two-year-old daughter were swept away by the current while trying to cross the Rio Grande to Brownsville, Texas, in Matamoros, Mexico. Photograph: Julia Le Duc/AP
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.
As part of a broader crack down on migration, the Trump administration tightened the country’s asylum system, creating a growing backlog of cases. Migrants are routinely forced to wait for months to start the asylum process; those who despair of waiting turn to more remote and dangerous routes across the southern frontier.
On Sunday, two babies, a toddler and a woman were found dead  after succumbing to heat  exhaustion in Anzalduas Park, which borders the river in the city of Mission.
Elsewhere three children and a woman 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 100F.
So far this year, dozens of people have died attempting to cross the Rio Grande, where water levels are at their highest levels in 20 years and record levels of snowmelt run-off have transformed the river into a raging torrent.
Claudia Hernández, a Mexican police officer in the border town of Piedras Negras, told the Guardian: “The river is treacherous and people who aren’t from here don’t know that. I grew up here along the Río Bravo River [Río Grande]. I wouldn’t even go into that water to bathe or swim. There are springs and whirlpools and when the current takes you it can pull you under.”

Authorities stand behind yellow warning tape along the Rio Grande where the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria were found, in Matamoros, Mexico, on Monday.Photograph: Julia Le Duc/AP
Isabel Turcios, a Franciscan nun, the director of the Casa del Migrante shelter in Piedras Negras said that local activists warn migrants not to try their luck on the river, but the US has drastically reduced the number of migrants who are allowed to request asylum each day.
“People get desperate and cannot keep waiting. They just want to cross. So they go to the river and without any form of protection – no lifejacket, nothing to save them – they go into the river. They always tell me that if God wants them to make it then somehow they will make it.”
She added: “It’s not how things should be. They should be able to cross at the bridges. Every human being has the right to migrate. It’s a human right.”
Meanwhile Mexico has launched  its own crackdown on migrantsas the government scrambles to ward off Trump’s threat of trade tariffs. (▪ ▪ ▪)

► Please, continue reading this news here: Source

chanakyakripa

One cannot blame a country for trying to stop illegal immigration, bcos it's a stress on its resources.. But we must have a look at this issue from different angles, the foremost being humanitarian. Will taking a little care for few people by providing shelter & food be so perilous for a country? Why can't the world unite to create conditions such that no one needs to immigrate? Probably a little political will and humanitarian approach can solve this issues. It has been seen that immigration happens mainly not for better living conditions but for human safety, to flee from genocides.

KH_Hirsch

The picture reminds a lot of people of the young boy drowned in the Greek sea. And no, I don't think we can do a lot. What's needed is to encourage people to stay in their home countries and be able to live a safe and prosperous life. But too many politicans stash their pockets with money dedicated originally to other causes. And too many politicans use religion to stir hatred between people for their own power ambitions. I don't have a lot of hope I'm afraid.

asr335704

I would say that all the countries should provide basic amenities to their citizens so that they live in their country with pride and happiness. Then there would be no need to migrate anywhere illegally. However this is too ideal to be true.

I pray that such accidents do not occur again.