Honduran Official Says Crying Child on Time Cover Was Not Separated From Parents
The crying child that has become the defining image of President Donald Trump‘s “zero tolerance” border policy was not separated from her parents, a Honduran official told Reuters.
The photo — of a 2-year-old girl named Yanela, per the Washington Post — taken at a border detention center by Getty Images photographer John Moore, was used in Time Magazine’s powerful cover showing Trump looking down at her, with a headline that read “Welcome to America.”
It was used in a number of other publications amid a public outcry over Trump’s policy that separated migrant children from their families.
Reuters spoke to a man who said he was the girl’s father:
“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,” Denis Valera 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, where Sanchez has applied for asylum, and they were not separated after being detained near the border.
The Honduran deputy foreign minister, confirmed that story to Reuters.
“Seeing what was happening to her in that moment breaks anyone’s heart,” Valera said.
Valera continued that Sanchez and her daughter left Honduras without telling him, he presumed to meet her family in the U.S.
“If they are deported, that is OK as long as they do not leave the child without her mother,” he told Reuters. “I am waiting to see what happens with them.”
Read the Reuters report here.
