Mexico City - The Salvadoran embassy in Mexico will on Thursday
repatriate the bodies of a Salvadoran father and his small daughter
who drowned when trying to cross a river straddling the US-Mexican
border, the Mexican newspaper La Jornada reported.
A photo of the bodies of Oscar Alberto Martinez, 26, and 23-month-old
Valeria, lying face down in shallow water with her arm draped around
his neck, sparked global outrage over the difficulties migrants face.
Their remains will be taken to Monterrey in Mexico and then flown to
El Salvador, La Jornada said.
However, Martinez' widow Tania Avalos may decide to cremate the
bodies and throw the ashes into the Rio Grande river, to leave them
near their unattained destination - the United States, the Mexican
newspaper El Grafico reported.
Martinez, Avalos and Valeria arrived in Mexico more than two months
ago and were given humanitarian visas, according to Mexican and
Salvadoran media.
But they were worried that US President Donald Trump's crackdown on
migration would prevent them from crossing the border into the US,
the news website ElSalvador.com quoted their relatives as saying.
Tania Vanessa Avalos, accompanied by her cousin Milton, shields her face from the press as she walks between government offices in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, Mexico. Picture: Rebecca Blackwell/AP
The migratory formalities also turned out to be long and complicated,
and the couple started running out of money, El Grafico quoted Avalos
as saying.
"Therefore on Sunday, Oscar said we should already cross the river,
that I should trust and have faith that nothing would happen. He took
Valeria in his arms and we entered, hanging onto a rope, but the
waters started pulling us away.
"Oscar held the girl up with one arm, but he could not resist and she
was let loose. I managed to get back to the shore, but I saw how the
water pulled my husband and my daughter away."
Avalos alerted the security forces, who found the bodies 12 hours
later.
Oscar wanted to migrate to find work and to "give our daughter,
Valeria, a better life," the widow said, drying her tears.
Oscar's mother, Rosa Ramirez, told the Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa
Grafica that she had warned him against the dangerous journey. But
the couple wanted to work in the US to be able to buy their own home
in El Salvador, and "they therefore opted for the American dream,"
Ramirez said.
"Mom, I love you," were Oscar's last words to his mother from Mexico.
"Take care, we are well over here."
Other dramatic images of migrants were meanwhile made public. A
video, published by the Mexican newspaper El Universal, showed a
Haitian woman at a migrants' reception centre near Mexico's border
with Guatemala.
She is lying on the ground, weeping and talking through an opening
underneath what looks like a metal gate.
The woman says there is no drinking water, hardly any food and that
her son is ill. "Help me, justice," she she shouts, again and again.
If you are horrified by the tragic images from the Rio Grande and the recent deaths of migrants in the desert, you are not alone.
These deaths are the result of Trump Admin policies that deny families their legal right to seek asylum and force them into desperate circumstances.
— Amnesty International (@amnestyusa) June 26, 2019
Amnesty International on Wednesday blamed Martinez' and Valeria's
death on US migration policies.
"If you are horrified by the tragic images from the Rio Grande and
the recent deaths of migrants in the desert, you are not alone. These
deaths are the result of Trump Admin policies that deny families
their legal right to seek asylum and force them into desperate
circumstances," the rights group tweeted.
Trump commented on the impact of the photograph before leaving for
the G20 summit in Japan. He blamed Democrats in Congress for not
changing US laws so that people will not take such risks.
"If we had the right laws - that Democrats aren't letting us have -
those people wouldn't be trying," he said, speaking outside the White
House.
Beyond drowning, Trump said other things are happening to people,
including women being raped.
"If they fix the laws, they wouldn't have that," Trump said. "That
journey across that river is a very dangerous journey."
Trump also said that humanitarian aid bills to help the children at
the border are currently in the House and Senate. He said he had
spoken with congressional leaders and believes the two sides would
come together and produce a bipartisan bill.
The picture of the two bodies evoked comparisons with the 2015
picture of Alan Kurdi, a 3-year-old Syrian boy whose body washed up
on the Turkish shore. The image shocked the world and became a symbol
of the global migrant crisis.
"Less than four years after [Kurdi's death], we are once again
confronted with powerful visual evidence of people dying during their
dangerous journeys across borders," the head of UN Refugee Agency
UNHCR, Filippo Grandi, said in a Wednesday statement.
The bodies of El Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez, 25, and his nearly two-year-old daughter Valeria, are placed into a funeral home van at the morgue in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, Mexico. Picture: Rebecca Blackwell/AP
Pope Francis said he had seen the picture of the two bodies with
"immense sadness."
"The Pope is profoundly saddened by their death, and is praying for
them and for all migrants who have lost their lives while seeking to
flee war and misery," the Vatican statement added.
"One day we will manage to build a country where migration will be an
option and not an obligation. Meanwhile, we will do what is possible.
God help us," Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said on Tuesday.
Hundreds of thousands of people leave El Salvador, Honduras and
Guatemala every year to flee crime-related violence and poverty. But
Rosa Ramirez said she hopes that Salvadorans will now not "even think
of" migrating.
The Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, which lies on the Rio Grande,
meanwhile published a video warning migrants against trying to cross
the river.
"Migrant friend, do not allow the search for your dreams to turn into
a nightmare," the video said.
"Without life, there is no future nor a dream to reach."