The President & Stephen Miller of the United States of America Horror Against Immigration

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DISTURBING: Photo Of Drowned Father And Daughter Highlights Migrants’ Tragic Struggles Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and daughter Valeria drowned on the bank of the Rio Grande. Peter Orsi and Amy Guthrie

MEXICO CITY (AP) — 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’s head tucked inside. Her arm was draped around his neck
suggesting she clung to him in her final moments. The searing photograph of
 the sad discovery on Monday, captured by journalist Julia Le Duc and
 published by Mexican newspaper La Jornada, highlights the perils of the
latest migration crisis involving mostly Central Americans fleeing violence
 and poverty and hoping for asylum in the United States.

From the scorching Sonora desert to the fast-moving Rio Grande,
the U.S.-Mexico border has long been an at times deadly journey
for those who cross it illegally
between ports of entry.

In recent weeks alone, two baebies, a toddler and a woman
were found dead on Sunday, overcome by the sweltering heat.
Elsewhere thre children and an adult from Honduras
died in April after their raft capsized on the Rio Grande, and a 6-year-old
from India wasfound dead earlier this month in Arizona, where
temperatures routinely soar wellabove 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Very regrettable that this would happen,” Mexican President Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tuesday in response to a question about the
photograph. “We have always denounced that as there is more rejection i
the United States, there are people who lose their lives in the desert or
crossing” the river.

According to Le Duc’s reporting for La Jornada, Óscar Alberto Martínez
Ramírez, frustrated because the family from El Salvador were unable
to present themselves to U.S. authorities and request asylum, swam
across the river with his daughter, Valeria.

He set her on the U.S. bank of the river and started back for his wife,
Tania Vanessa Ávalos, but seeing him move away the girl threw herself
into the waters. Martínez returned and was able to grab Valeria, but the
current swept them both away. The account was based on remarks by
Ávalos to police at the scene.

Their bodies were discovered Monday morning on the bank of the river
near Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas, and several
hundred yards (meters) from where they had tried to cross, just a half-mile
(1 kilometer) from an international bridge.

The photo recalls the 2015 image of a 3-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 U.S.

U.S. policy has drastically reduced the number of migrants who are
allowed to request asylum, down from dozens per day previously
to sometimes just a handful at some ports of entry.

The United States has also been expanding its program under
which asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their claims are processed
in U.S. courts, a wait that could last many months or even years.

This week the city of Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas, the same state
where Matamoros is located, said it will become the latest city to receive
returnees as soon as Friday.

Many migrant shelters are overflowing on the Mexican side, and cartels
hold sway over much of Tamaulipas and have been known to kidnap
and kill migrants.

Meanwhile, Mexico is stepping up its own crackdown on immigration,
with much of the focus on slowing the flow in the country’s south.

“With greater crackdowns and restrictions,” said Cris Ramón, senior
immigration policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank
in Washington, “we could see more desperate measures by people
trying to enter Mexico or the U.S.”