A little girl shown in a viral photo crying as a U.S. Border Patrol agent detained her mother – and used by TIME magazine to symbolize the Trump administration's family separation policy – reportedly was never separated from her mom.
“Welcome to America,” declared a somber TIME cover, which showed the picture of the Honduran child Yanela Sanchez next to a towering President Trump.
TIME called it “an image America could not ignore” and interviewed the photographer, as did other outlets. TIME followed up with another
article entirely about the cover and “the story behind” it.
The picture was featured in international coverage of the policy around the world. The New York Daily News also put Sanchez on the cover of its June 16 issue with the headline: “Callous. Soulless. Craven. Trump.”
CNN analyst Chris Cillizza wrote an entire
article on the TIME cover: "It shows the compassion gap that exists between the Trump administration's 'zero-tolerance' border policy and the real-life people that are affected."
But multiple outlets interviewed the father of the girl behind the iconic image, and he said he had learned that his two-year-old daughter was detained with her mother at a facility in Texas, and the two were not separated at all. The Honduran government confirmed his version of events to
Reuters.
The Washington Post reported that the mother, Sandra Sanchez, had previously been deported in 2013 to Honduras. Her husband told the Post that she left without telling him she was taking Yanela with her and couldn’t contact her. But then he saw the picture on the news.
"You can imagine how I felt when I saw that photo of my daughter. It broke my heart. It's difficult as a father to see that, but I know now that they are not in danger. They are safer now than when they were making that journey to the border," Denis Javier Varela Hernandez told
The Daily Mail.
He also said he did not support his wife’s decision to make the perilous trek to the U.S. and that they have three other children together.
"I didn't support it. I asked her, why? Why would she want to put our little girl through that? But it was her decision at the end of the day."
The confusion and misrepresentation over the family's circumstances came amid a chaotic week in which passions flared over the administration's controversial “zero-tolerance” policy that seeks prosecution for virtually all illegal border crossers. That policy led to family separations, but Trump backed off with an executive order earlier this week allowing families to stay together during proceedings.
He faced bipartisan criticism over the separations, but the outrage reached intense levels on the left.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018...mily-says.html
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Originally Posted by Dave Grubb
