Many of us were horrified on Tuesday to see the picture of the bodies of a Salvadoran father, Oscar Martinez Ramirez, and his 2-year-old daughter, Valeria, washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande in Mexico.
Valeria’s tiny arms were wrapped in the shirt of her father, desperately clinging to him, clinging to life. Oscar must have fought to the final terrifying breath to save his daughter from drowning until, tragically, they were both overcome. My first instinct when seeing the photo on the screen of my phone was to turn away. It was too hard, too graphic, too brutal and too personal.
Yet I just returned from a visit to the border, where I visited churches providing assistance to migrants like Oscar and Valeria, and I know that turning away is the easy answer. We need to let this image, and the story of desperation behind it, break through our defenses. What would cause a family to face such danger? What would compel parents to put so young a child at risk?
I think of the Honduran father I met on Friday, recently released from a detention facility. An engineer with a good job, he thought he was providing a safe environment for his family – until his 12-year-old daughter was raped by a gang.
Enraged, he sought out the gang leader to demand that she be left alone. The next day, members of the gang sprayed his home with bullets as he narrowly escaped out the back with his family.
Valeria’s tiny arms were wrapped in the shirt of her father, desperately clinging to him, clinging to life. Oscar must have fought to the final terrifying breath to save his daughter from drowning until, tragically, they were both overcome. My first instinct when seeing the photo on the screen of my phone was to turn away. It was too hard, too graphic, too brutal and too personal.
Yet I just returned from a visit to the border, where I visited churches providing assistance to migrants like Oscar and Valeria, and I know that turning away is the easy answer. We need to let this image, and the story of desperation behind it, break through our defenses. What would cause a family to face such danger? What would compel parents to put so young a child at risk?
I think of the Honduran father I met on Friday, recently released from a detention facility. An engineer with a good job, he thought he was providing a safe environment for his family – until his 12-year-old daughter was raped by a gang.
Enraged, he sought out the gang leader to demand that she be left alone. The next day, members of the gang sprayed his home with bullets as he narrowly escaped out the back with his family.
Immigrants 1,026 el paso sector by U.S. Customs and Border Protection is licensed under Flickr U.S. Government Work
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