MATAMOROS, MEXICO: An agonizing photo of a Salvadoran migrant and his young daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande at the U.S.-Mexico border has distressed the whole world. The picture of Oscar Alberto Martinez, 25, and his 24-month-old daughter Angie Valeria once again triggered the debate on the plight of refugees and migrants — in the present case from Central America.
The pair — the father and daughter had traveled from El Salvador and were seeking asylum in the United States. Heart wrenching photo of dead father and daughter in which daughter is tightly holding the father till last breadth of her life has shaken all the people having minimum conscience to feel and sense the plight of migrants. This has brought the issues related with migrants into sharp focus yet again on sharp focus on Wednesday of a U.S. political debate over President Donald Trump’s asylum policies. U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called the image “horrific” and said the president’s migration clampdown made deaths more likely.
“Trump’s policy of making it harder and harder to seek asylum – and separating families…..” he wrote on Twitter. In turn, Trump blamed the Democrats, whom he said were blocking his government’s attempts at closing “loopholes” in U.S. law that encourage migrants to apply for U.S. asylum. “If they fixed the laws you wouldn’t have that. People are coming up, they’re running through the Rio Grande,” he said, referring to the river known as the Rio Bravo in Mexico that forms a large part of the border between the two countries.
“They can change it very easily so people don’t come up, and people won’t get killed,” Trump told reporters. Record numbers of Central American migrants are reaching the United States this year despite a crackdown by Trump.
Many flee their homes in Central America to escape poverty, drought and high levels of criminal violence, much of it carried out by street gangs. U.S. border patrol agents have apprehended 664,000 people along the southern border so far this year, a 144 percent increase from last year, said Brian Hastings, chief of law enforcement operations for the U.S. Border Patrol. (Agencies)
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