Picture of dead migrant dad, girl prompts responses

SAN MARTIN, El Salvador — The mother of a man who drowned alongside his 23-month-old daughter while trying to cross the Rio Grande into Texas says she finds a heartbreaking photograph of their bodies hard to look at but takes some comfort in knowing “they died in each other’s arms.”

Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria were swept away by the current near Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas, this week. The grim photo shows the girl tucked inside her father’s shirt for protection with her arm draped over his neck.

“It’s tough, it’s kind of shocking, that image,” the 25-year-old man’s mother, Rosa Ramírez, said. “But at the same time, it fills me with tenderness. I feel so many things, because at no time did he let go of her.

“You can see how he protected her,” she said. “They died in each other’s arms.”

Pope Francis saw the photos and was deeply saddened, a Vatican spokesman said.

“The pope … is praying for them and for all migrants who have lost their lives while seeking to flee war and misery,” said Alessandro Gisotti, the Vatican’s interim spokesman.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested that Martínez and his daughter might not have died had Trump agreed to Democratic efforts to help migrants.

“How could President Trump look at this picture and not understand that these are human beings fleeing violence and persecution, willing to risk a perilous, sometimes failed journey in search of a better life,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, opened a hearing Wednesday saying the photo should propel Congress toact.

“I don’t want to see another picture like that on the U.S. border,” Johnson said.