Sad Photo of Drowned Father and Daughter Sharpen US Refugee Discussion. The sad photo of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria, lying on the banks of the Rio Grande River, shocks America and the rest of the world.
The image of the two, drowned together on the road to an uncertain future in the United States, symbolizes the migration crisis that the country is facing. And the courage of despair with which refugees accept the hellish, and sometimes deadly, journey.
Father Oscar (25), fled with his family from El Salvador and frustrated because an asylum application would take weeks, decided to take the plunge last Sunday and swam with Valeria to the American side of the border river.
There he put the child on the shore and returned to fetch his wife, Tania Vanessa Avalos. The toddler, however, fell into the water when her father swam away, the mother tells in tears.
Martinez turned around and managed to grab his daughter, but the water grabbed them and dragged the two along.
“When the girl was in the water, he tried to get to her,” says Rosa Ramirez, the mother of the killed father, who begged her son not to go to the US. But when he wanted to catch her, he went down and couldn’t get out.
He put her in his shirt and presumably said to himself, “I came that far” and decided to die together. “