The father of the Honduran girl, who has become the face of the family separation crisis in the United States after a picture of her crying as President Donald Trump stares back at her, has refuted the reports that his child was separated from the mother.
While speaking to Daily Mail, Denis Javier Varela Hernandez said that both the mother and child were safe and together. He added that they were being detained at a family residential center in Texas.
He, however, criticised the US President’s border policy. I've never seen it in a positive light the way others do. It violates human rights and children's rights. Separating children from their parents is just wrong. They are suffering and are traumatised,” he added.
The mother, identified as Sandra, was part of a group that were caught by Border Patrol agents after making their way across the Rio Grande river on a raft. Sandra had trekked to the United States to ‘live the American dream’ and have a ‘better quality of life’. She had left without informing Hernandez or their three other children.
Hernandez has said that he hopes his wife and child will return. “I will welcome them with open arms,” he added.
The photograph taken by Getty Images photographer John Moore shows the girl crying on a dirt track as her mother is patted down by a Border Patrol agent. The picture became one of the iconic images in the flurry of media coverage about the separation of families by the Trump administration.
Dozens of newspapers and magazines around the globe published the picture, swelling the tide of outrage that pushed Trump to back down Wednesday and say families would no longer be separated.
The photo was used on a Facebook fundraiser that drew more than $17 million dollars in donations from close to half a million people for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a Texas-based nonprofit that provides legal defense services to immigrants and refugees.
The Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" immigration policy had led to the separation of 2,342 children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border between May 5 and June 9.
Video footage of separated children sitting in cages, an audiotape of wailing children and Moore's photo had sparked worldwide anger over Trump's immigration policies.
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 "People march in protest against the Trump administration policy of separating immigrant families suspected of illegal entry")
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