A Father and Daughter Who Drowned at the Border Put Attention on Immigration

The desperate and tragic plight of a father and daughter who drowned while trying to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S. has become a new flashpoint in the border crisis, after a photographer captured a haunting image that shows the pair lying facedown, washed onto the banks of the Rio Grande. Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, 25, died as he tried to bring his 23-month-old daughter, Angie Valeria, to safety and a new life in the U.S. Ramírez’s wife, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, says she watched from the shore as her husband and daughter were pulled away by a strong river current near the border crossing between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas. On the same day Óscar Alberto and Valeria died, U.S. Border Patrol agents found four bodies along the Rio Grande in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, about 55 miles west of Brownsville.

Source: www.npr.org