The world receives another wake up call with the picture of a dead Salvadorian father and daughter on the bank of the Rio Grande river. The picture shows the little girl with her head under water, her arm still around her dead father. The picture has sent shock waves on social media, people calling it the ugliest face of US President Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies.
The father was Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, a migrant in search of a better life for him and his family of three which included his wife Tania and 23-month-old daughter, Valeria. The Salvadorian family had been in Mexico for two months already, desperately seeking routes to cross into the US. They had arrived at a camp in Matamoros in Northern Mexico on Sunday and realised that due to the ‘metering policy’ they would have to wait in Matamoros indefinitely.
The family had tried to cross the Rio Grande river to enter the US. Oscar and Valeria crossed first and when Oscar went back to get Tania, Valeria, confused about why he was going back, jumped into the water after him. Her father caught her but the current overpowered them and they drowned. Oscar had held her inside his T-shirt to keep her safe and that was how they were found, the little girl’s arm around her dead father’s neck.
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Just like Valeria and her family, the migrants seeking asylum in the US and reaching Matamoros, are not Mexican but are instead from countries like El Salvadaor, Gautemala and Cuba. Many of them are granted temporary Mexican visas. The ‘metering policy’ of the Trump administration limits the daily number of asylum seekers that wish to cross the border legally. Those who are not allowed to enter are told to wait for their turn.
These asylum seekers wait for months in squalor in over-packed camps where shelter and ration, whether potable water or food, are not always available. Even during this wait, there is no guarantee that they will receive asylum. In such conditions, with expiring Mexican visas, these people see no option but to cross the border illegally, which is dangerous not only due to the hardships they will have to face in the journey but also because of the harm it could cause to their pending asylum requests.
Since the 1990s, the American government has been using a policy of ‘Prevention through Deterrence’. This includes placing legal entry points at hazardous locations, effectively using the desert as a weapon and a deterrent for people seeking asylum. Gurupreet Kaur, a 10-year-old Indian girl, was a victim of this policy. Kaur died due to a heatstroke when she tried to cross the US-Mexico border in Arizona with her mother this June.
Even after crossing the border successfully, the family-separation policy of the Trump administration still continues to haunt these migrants. Even after the recall of the policy, 'unaccompanied minors’ who enter the state not with their parents or legal guardian, but with their older sibling or other relatives are separated from their family members and held by US Border Patrol. Legally they cannot be held here for more than 72 hours and have to be sent to the Department of Health and Human services who hands the children over to their nearest living relative in the US. However this is not the actuality of the matter. Children are held for weeks in facilities without being supplied with enough rations. There have been six reported cases of children dying in the US custody due to lack of medical care, including a Guatemalan boy who was about the same age as Valeria.
These migrants are only pursuing the ‘American dream’ that the US has been selling since its coinage in 1930s. The ‘dream’ is rooted in the US Declaration of Independence that proclaims “all men are created equal” with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” It is ironic that those in pursuit of this dream are faced by the arbitrary policies of the US administration.
