The toddler shown as sobbing and looking up at the superimposed image of President Donald Trump on an upcoming cover of Time magazine was not, in fact, separated from her mother at the U.S. border, according to a man who says he is the girl’s father, Yahoo reported.
The original photograph, taken at the scene of a border detention by a Getty Images photographer named John Moore, has become an iconic image used liberally by the mainstream media in the wall-to-wall coverage of the separation of illegal immigrant adults and children at the U.S. southern border.
Newspapers, digital media outlets and magazines around the world published and shared the picture, adding to a tide of outrage among many — but the story pushed by the media was not accurate. While the moment captured a toddler in tears, she was not kept apart from her mother.
“My daughter has become a symbol of the … separation of children at the U.S. border.”
“She may have even touched President Trump’s heart,” the little girl’s father, Denis Valera, also told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Valera said the little girl and her mother, Sandra Sanchez, have been detained together in the Texas border town of McAllen, Texas, where Sanchez has applied for asylum — the same town first lady Melania Trump visited on Thursday, by the way.
Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Nelly Jerez confirmed Valera’s version of events.
The photo of the child was also used in a Facebook fundraiser that raised more than $17 million in donations for RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services) from close to a half-million people, Yahoo also reported. (Some of the big-name donors include Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, both of Facebook.) RAICES is a Texas-based nonprofit that provides legal defense services to immigrants and refugees.
Sanchez and her daughter left Puerto Cortes, a major Honduran port, without telling Valera or the couple’s three other children, the little girl’s father said.
Related: Four Immigration Facts Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You
He said he assumed Sanchez left for the U.S. for better economic opportunity, and said she has family in the U.S.
“If they are deported, that is OK as long as they do not leave the child without her mother,” Valera said. “I am waiting to see what happens with them.”
Deirdre Reilly is a senior editor with LifeZette. Follow her on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage and article images: Time)
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