Thread: Border agent involved with dramatic photo of crying girl breaks silence

Border agent involved with dramatic photo of crying girl breaks silence

2 hrs ago

The picture of a Honduran girl crying as she and her mother are detained in Texas has grabbed worldwide attention and come to symbolize the intense debate about separating children from their parents.

Time magazine put the young girl on this week's cover, but the Border Patrol agent involved in the dramatic scene says the photo might be a little misleading. That agent said the mother and daughter were never separated and are still together.

"We were patrolling the border. It was after 10 o'clock at night," Border Patrol agent Carlos Ruiz told CBS News' David Begnaud.

He was the first to encounter Sandra Sanchez and her daughter after they allegedly crossed the Rio Grande River into Texas illegally.

"We asked her to set the kid down in front of her, not away from her, she was right in front of her...So we can properly search the mother," Ruiz said. "So the kid immediately started crying as she set her down. I personally went up to the mother and asked her 'Are you doing OK? Is the kid OK?' and she said, 'Yes. She's tired and thirsty. It's 11 o'clock at night.'" Getty photographer John Moore joined Ruiz for a nearly nine-hour ride along on the border. He was just feet away from Sanchez and her daughter.

© Provided by CBS Interactive Inc. July 2 issue of Time"When I took this picture, I knew it would be important. I had no way of knowing that it would touch people quite on the level that it has," Moore said. "I asked her how long she'd been traveling, and she gave me this very weary look, and she said she'd been on the road with her daughter for a month…. Imagine doing that with children. It's almost impossible to imagine, actually." Moore's image is now on the cover of Time magazine next to a picture of President Trump.

"They're using it to symbolize a policy and that was not the case in this picture," Ruiz said. "It took less than two minutes. As soon as the search was finished, she immediately picked the girl up, and the girl immediately stopped crying." Moore says Ruiz and other agents acted professionally that night. But he is happy with the cover and the response to the image.

"Oftentimes, immigration is talked about in terms of statistics, and when you put a human face and humanize an issue, you make people feel. And when you make people feel, they have compassion. And if I've done just a little bit of that, then that's OK," Moore said.

Ruiz said he and his fellow agents represent more than just the Border Patrol logo.

"We are also fathers, we are also sons, we are also have families, and we do care, and we do our jobs, and we treat these people as humanely and as best as we possibly can," Ruiz said.

Sandra Sanchez and her daughter were arrested on June 10 and are still detained, so Sanchez has not been able to respond to any of this. According to U.S. Border Patrol, they were only in their custody for 72 hours and were then turned over to Health and Human Services. It's unclear where Sanchez and her daughter are now.

The photo has reached the young girl's father in Honduras. He told Univision it broke his heart and that he hoped his wife and daughter's rights were respected.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bo...nce/ar-AAz0g88

Follow link to see photographs. I couldn't get pictures to post.

Crying Girl in Viral Border Photo Was Never Separated From Her Mother

(Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

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BY: David Rutz
June 22, 2018 9:19 am

The father of the crying Honduran toddler in a photo that went viral during media outrage about the Trump administration's border policies says she was never separated from her mother.

Denis Javier Varela Hernandez saw the photo and said that his daughter and her mother, Sandra Sanchez, were not separated after Sanchez applied for asylum. Reuters reportedthat Honduran deputy foreign minister Nelly Jerez confirmed Varela’s story.

"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," Varela said in an interview with the Daily Mail. "They are safer now than when they were making that journey to the border."

Varela told the Washington Post his wife, with whom he has three other children, left Honduras with their youngest daughter without telling him. He said he got a phone call from the Honduras foreign ministry telling him the two were being held together, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement released a statement about her whereabouts:

A spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement released a statement to The Post on Friday confirming that Sanchez was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol near Hidalgo, Tex., on June 12 while traveling with a family member. She was transferred to ICE custody on June 17, and is being housed at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Tex., the statement read.

The Trump administration took heat for enforcing a "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting all immigrants illegally crossing the border and temporarily separating them from their children. Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday halting the practice.

The image of Yanela, who will turn 2 in July, looking up and sobbing as her mother was patted down in McAllen, Texas, became the face of the controversy, with many assuming her tears were due to a pending separation.
Her picture was used to promote a fundraiser that has collected more than $18 million to date to assist the effort in reuniting families. Pulitzer Prize winner John Moore snapped the photo.
TIME magazine used the girl on its most recent cover, showing President Donald Trump towering over her in front of a stark, red background. "Welcome to America," it read.

TIME
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TIME’s new cover: A reckoning after Trump's border separation policy: What kind of country are we? https://ti.me/2JVINI1
7:47 AM - Jun 21, 2018

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"The new TIME Magazine cover shows just how bad things look for the White House," MSNBC host Katy Tur intoned on Thursday.

Varela said he thought the photo may have "touched President Trump's heart."

"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," Varela told Reuters.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/crying-...om-her-mother/

Varela told the Washington Post his wife, with whom he has three other children, left Honduras with their youngest daughter without telling him. He said he got a phone call from the Honduras foreign ministry telling him the two were being held together, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement released a statement about her whereabouts:

Wow, the woman actually deserted her husband and other children to come here illegally.

Originally Posted by MW

Wow, the woman actually deserted her husband and other children to come here illegally.

Now they send the wife and one kid...get on welfare and send back to husband and THREE other kids.

Send birth control....not foreign aid or cash.

This article from Breitbart is bascally the same, but the father added more.

"He said she had talked about going to the United States for a “better future” but she did not say she had made the decision to take the 1,800-mile trip — paying a “coyote” smuggler $6,000 to take them.

When Sandra left on her journey with Yanela, she left Hernandez behind with three other children — Wesly (14), Cindy (11), and Brianna (6).
Though he said she had planned to apply for political asylum, Hernandez did not mention any political persecution that might have justified the claim.

He also said that he was employed: “I thank God that I have a good job here.”She must of had a decent life in Honduras. Certainly not a refugee.

Fake News: Iconic Crying Migrant Girl Was Never Separated from Mother, Says Father

21 Jun 2018

The father of the tearful two-year-old Honduran migrant girl who became the face of the “family separation” news coverage says that his young daughter was never actually separated from her mother when caught by U.S. Border Patrol.

Instead, he says, his daughter and her mother are together in U.S. custody at “at a family residential center in Texas.”

Moreover, the mother had been deported from the U.S. in 2013, according to a statement given by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Buzzfeed on Thursday evening.

Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, 32, told the UK Daily Mail that his wife Sandra, 32, had taken their daughter, Yanela Denise, on a dangerous journey to the U.S. on June 3 without telling him. They had since been in touch, he said, and he learned the two had been detained together but never separated.

Yanela Denise became an iconic symbol of opposition to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, under which adults who cross the border illegally are prosecuted. As a result, children traveling with migrant adults are often taken to shelters separately until they can be reunited with their parents, a family member, or a sponsor.

Getty Images photographer John Moore took the famous photograph of Yanela Denise standing on the ground and looking up in tears while a McAllen, Texas, Border Patrol agent searched her mother next to a patrol vehicle.
The image spread like a California grassfire. Time Magazine used a cutout of the little girl on its recent cover, where she was depicted confronting President Donald Trump.

Multiple news outlets used the photograph as a symbol of the pain of families being separated by U.S. government officials. A Facebook fundraiser that used the photograph to solicit funds to help reunite families has already raised nearly $20 million, becoming the single largest crowdfunding campaign in the history of the social media platform.

Getty Images captioned the photograph by indicating that the mother and daughter had been “sent to a processing center for possible separation” (emphasis added).
Moore told the Washington Post earlier this week that he had assumed they would be separated: “In his head, he weighed the girl’s chances. According to new federal policies, he said, she would be taken from her mother when the van reached its destination. They would not be reunited until their case had wound through the courts, and then likely only to return to the country they had fled.”
However, Moore did not appear to confirm whether the two had, in fact, been separated.

Now, Hernandez says that his wife and daughter were never separated by Border Patrol agents and that they remain together.
Hernandez also told the Daily Mail that he did not support his wife Sandra’s decision to leave their home and travel through dangerous conditions to seek political asylum in the U.S.: “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.

“I don’t have any resentment for my wife, but I do think it was irresponsible of her to take the baby with her in her arms because we don’t know what could happen,” he told the Daily Mail.

He said she had talked about going to the United States for a “better future” but she did not say she had made the decision to take the 1,800-mile trip — paying a “coyote” smuggler $6,000 to take them.

When Sandra left on her journey with Yanela, she left Hernandez behind with three other children — Wesly (14), Cindy (11), and Brianna (6).
Though he said she had planned to apply for political asylum, Hernandez did not mention any political persecution that might have justified the claim.

He also said that he was employed: “I thank God that I have a good job here.”

Hernandez said that the first news of his wife’s and daughter’s fate came when he saw Moore’s photograph.
He also told the Daily Mail that officials told him on Wednesday that his wife and child are together in Texas and are “doing fine,” he said.
In an interview with Univision (in Spanish), Hernandez cried as he described his feelings about the situation:
White House correspondent Saagar Enjeti said the interview with the father shows that the family was never separated by government officials, as portrayed by the media. Enjeti observed that his wife came to the U.S. for economic reasons, not fear of violence, and the he was unhappy with her for taking his little girl on very dangerous journey.
The ICE statement to Buzzfeed read:

On June 12, 2018, Sandra Maria Sanchez, 32, a previously deported woman from Honduras illegally re-entered the United States,” . She was arrested by agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Border Patrol near Hidalgo, Texas, while traveling with a family member. On June 17, 2018, Sanchez was transferred to ICE custody, and is currently housed at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Her immigration proceedings are ongoing.
On July 3, 2013, Sanchez was encountered by immigration officials in Hebbronville, Texas. On July 9, 2013, she was transferred to ICE ERO custody. On July 18, 2013, Sanchez was removed to Honduras under expedited removal.

http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2018/...r-says-father/

The mother and child are disqualified for asylum.

A better life and a job is not grounds to stay.

They need to be loaded up NOW and deported back home!

Moreover, the mother had been deported from the U.S. in 2013, according to a statement given by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Buzzfeed on Thursday evening.

SMH!

FAST TRACK HER AND HER CHILD OUT OF HERE!!!

BEEN DEPORTED BEFORE!

DONALD TRUMP...SEND BUSES AND GET THEM ALL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!