The New York Times is running a horrible photo on their front page of two dead migrants laying face-down in the Rio Grande.
They say they are trying to highlight the perilous plight of migrants as they try to enter the US, but this is very problematic.
Today’s @nytimes front page. pic.twitter.com/j4380w5H6n
— Brian Munoz (@brianmmunoz) June 26, 2019
Let me first say that this is absolutely tragic and I hate that it happened. This isn’t what anyone wants.
But unfortunately it happened because of the choices made by this family to illegally cross into the US:
SUN SENTINEL – According to Le Duc’s reporting for La Jornada, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, frustrated because the family from El Salvador was unable to present themselves to U.S. authorities and request asylum, swam across the river on Sunday 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.
Details of the incident were confirmed Tuesday by a Tamaulipas state government official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, and by Martínez’s mother back in El Salvador, Rosa Ramírez, who spoke with her daughter-in-law by phone afterward.
“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,” Ramírez told the AP. “He put her in his shirt, and I imagine he told himself, ‘I’ve come this far’ and decided to go with her.”
The Tamaulipas government official said the family arrived in Matamoros early Sunday and went to the U.S. Consulate to try to get a date to request asylum. The mother is 21 years old and the father was 25, he added.
But waits are long there as elsewhere along the border. Last week, a shelter director said only about 40 to 45 asylum interviews were being conducted in Matamoros each week, while somewhere in the neighborhood of 800-1,700 names were on a waiting list.
It’s not clear what happened to the family at the U.S. Consulate, but later in the day they made the decision to cross. The Tamaulipas official said the father and daughter set off from a small park that abuts the river. Civil defense officials arrived at the scene at 7 p.m. Sunday and later took the wife to the shelter.
It’s incredibly unfortunate and I’m moved by the photo. But this is something that our ridiculous asylum laws have created and just a few minutes ago Trump put the blame squarely on the Democrats for this and other deaths like it:
Trump isn’t wrong here. Yes, the choice was made by the family to cross. But they wouldn’t even be here if they didn’t think they could get in via asylum and Democrats flatly refuse to stop this madness.
The family wasn’t even planning on staying in the US for but a couple of years. They didn’t want to be citizens and assimilate into the US. They simply wanted to earn just enough money to build a house and then they’d go back, according to the Sentinel.
Our asylum laws must be changed. What will it take for Democrats to change them?
The Democrats should change the Loopholes and Asylum Laws so lives will be saved at our Southern Border. They said it was not a crisis at the Border, that it was all just “manufactured.” Now they admit that I was right – But they must do something about it. Fix the Laws NOW!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2019