Mother laments after the photo of her son and granddaughter, Oscar and Valeria, lying face down on the banks of the Rio Grande river ricocheted across social media
SAN SALVADOR - The mother of a Salvadoran man who drowned with his young daughter while trying to reach U.S. soil, becoming a global symbol of the perils of migration, said she urged her son not to leave, fearing danger would meet him on the long journey north.
Speaking with Reuters from her home in the central municipality of San Martin, Rosa Ramirez, Oscar’s mother, cradled two of her granddaughter’s most treasured toys, a blue-eyed baby doll and a stuffed purple monkey. Her friends have urged her to store her son and granddaughter’s belongings, but she is not ready for that yet.
Tania Vanessa Avalos, Oscar’s wife, survived, screaming “Where is my husband?” as rescue workers at the river bank carried away a stretcher covered with a white sheet, video images show. The U.N. refugee agency said the photo from the U.S. border represents “a failure to address the violence and desperation pushing people to take journeys of danger.”
Migrants such as Oscar and his daughter face long waits to apply for asylum at the United States’ shared border with Mexico as U.S. officials enforce a policy of “metering,” which limits the number of people who can apply each day. Mexican officials pledged to do more to halt the flow of migrants to the United States after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to slap tariffs on the country’s exports this month unless it tightened procedures.
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