It is a portrait of utter desperation, a father and his small daughter lying face down in muddy waters, her small body tucked inside his shirt, her arm draped across his neck.
Salvadoran dad Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria drowned while trying to swim across the Rio Grande into Texas to seek asylum.
Óscar had first crossed the river successfully with Valerie but she got scared and jumped in after him when she saw him swim back to get his wife Tania.
Tania, 23, watched in horror as they were swept away by the force of the river’s deadly current.
Óscar’s mother Rosa Ramirez said: “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.
“He put her in his shirt, and I imagine he told himself, ‘I’ve come this far’, and decided to go with her.”
She said she had begged her son not to leave El Salvador but he had dreams of building a house and a better future for his family.
The image, taken by Mexican journalist Julia Le Duc, has ricocheted around the world and caused a public outcry in the US, where migrants have been used as a political battering ram by President Donald Trump.
Many of the migrants say they are fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and plan to seek asylum in the US.
Trump’s hostile approach to immigration is pushing migrants to take even more perilous routes.
At least 283 migrants died on the US-Mexico border in 2018.
Democrat Joaquin Castro, chairman of the Hispanic Caucus, yesterday compared the picture to that of Aylan Kurdi, the young Syrian boy pictured washed up on a Turkish beach, who became a symbol of Europe’s refugee crisis.
But although Alan’s death at first promised to galvanise the international community in to action, refugees continue to lose their lives crossing in to Europe.
The photograph of Óscar and Valerie has intensified debate in the US over border policies.
Only hours after it emerged, the acting head of US Customs and Border Protection said he was resigning amid an uproar over thousands of children being held in filthy, overcrowded detention facilities.
Teenage mothers with babies have also been held in the centres.
John Sanders didn’t give a reason for stepping down but there has been condemnation following reports of border detention facilities incarcerating children in appalling conditions. Children have been held with inadequate food, a lack of medical care, and older youngsters being forced to care for toddlers, left in their own dirt without nappies.
Six children have died since September after being detained by border agents. At the centre of the furore has been a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, which was exposed as dirty and unfit for human inhabitation by a group of lawyers who visited the site.
About 300 children detained at Clint last week were moved to alternative facilities but 100 have since been moved back.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the conditions “child abuse”.
She said: “It is an atrocity that violates every value we have.”
But yesterday Trump hit back, reiterating his plans for stricter border control, deriding the Democrats for putting forward a bill promising £3.5billion in humanitarian aid to migrants arriving in the country.
Dragging out his well-worn mantra to , Trump said: “Democrats want open borders, which equals violent crime, drugs and human trafficking.”
