From left: Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter, Valeria.Photo: North Texas Dream Team
“Don’t go,” shetold her son. Do not go to America.
But whatever was ahead for him and his young family,Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírezalready knew what was behind: Working at a pizzeria in El Salvador he made approximately $350 a month. His wife, Tania Vanessa Ávalos, had worked at a Chinese restaurant but returned home to care for their daughter, Valeria, then on the verge of her second birthday.
The three lived with his mother, Rosa Ramírez, in a two-bedroom home outside of San Salvador, the capital. She gave them the larger room, but they wanted more than a life on $10 a day.
“I begged them not to go, but he wanted to scrape together money to build a home,” Rosatold the Associated Press. “They hoped to be there a few years and save up for the house.”
“I told him, ‘Son, don’t go. But if you do go, leave me the girl,’ ” Rosa recalled, according to the AP.
He told her, “No, mamá. How can you think that I would leave her?”
“He didn’t have the courage to leave her,” Rosa said of her son.
On Monday — nearly three months after Óscar, his wife and their daughter set off from El Salvador — his body was found washed ashore outside of Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas, and less than a mile from the bridge where the family had tried to seek asylum in the U.S.
Valeria’s body was pressed next to Óscar’s where she had been slipped under his shirt, her arm still slung across his neck.
He was 25. Their daughter was 23 months old.
“It’s astonishing to see this photo,” Rosa, Óscar’s mother, told the AP. “He never let her go. You can see how he protected her.”
Advocates say Óscar and Valeria’s case underlines the inhumanity of PresidentDonald Trump’s position on asylum-seekers: The family took to the water only after trying to request asylum at a port of entry, though under the Trump administration such requests are heavily “metered,” or restricted. (The official purpose of metering is to prevent overwhelming border resources, thoughthat has been disputed.)
Reports differ about whether Óscar, Ávalos and Valeria, who along with Óscar’s brother arrived in Matamoros on Sunday after two months in Mexico, were able to actually meet with anyone about asylum.
According to the AP, citing a Mexican government official, the family went to the U.S. Consulate on Sunday.
But theTimesandPostreported that the family was told the bridge they needed to cross was closed until Monday. (The State Department and Customs and Border Protection declined to comment to PEOPLE.)
Rosa Ramirez at her home outside San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.Salvador Melendez/AP/Shutterstock
Tania Ávalos waiting on the shoreline for her husband and daughter’s bodies.Julia Le Duc/AP/Shutterstock
Staying in Matamoros carried risks as well.
“It’s a dangerous place to be a person, and it’s certainly a dangerous place to be a migrant,” Woodson Martin, witha Brownsville nonprofitthat provides aid to those seeking asylum, told thePost.
On Sunday, out of apparent desperation and within sight of American soil, Oscar, his wife and their daughter tried to ford the Rio Grande into the southern tip of Texas.
“When the girl jumped in is when he tried to reach her, but when he tried to grab the girl, he went in further … and he couldn’t get out,” Óscar’s mother told the AP. “He put her in his shirt, and I imagine he told himself, ‘I’ve come this far’ and decided to go with her.”
Later, at the scene, Ávalos wailed, “Where is my husband?”
Though officials searched into the night for father and daughter, darkness prevented their discovery until the next morning.
In a tearful interviewwith Telemundo, Rosa said Óscar “loved his daughter so much. He loved her and that’s why he took her.”
“Neither one of them let each other go,” she said. “That’s how they died, both of them hugging.”
Last any of their loved ones spoke to Óscar or his wife, they seemed well enough and ready to be done with their journey.
“I told them to pray as much as possible,” Ávalos’ mother recalled to thePost, saying she spoke with her daughter before they headed for the U.S. “I asked God for nothing to happen to them, and for everything to go well. She assured me that they didn’t have far to go.”
Rosa foresaw this tragedy, in a way, shetold Reuters: “Ever since he [Óscar] first told me that they wanted to go, I told him not to. I had a feeling, it was such an ugly premonition. As a mother, I sensed that something could happen.”
Traveling with children is its own debate among migrants considering whether to head for America: The AP, citing an online group in El Salvador, quoted users who said kids should not make the journey because of the risks — though others acknowledged, “It’s more likely that they give you help with children.”
Óscar, his wife and daughter “went for the American dream,” his sister told theTimes.
“They wanted a better future for their girl,” Ávalos’ mother told thePost.
Julia Le Duc/AP/Shutterstock
Rosa Ramirez sobs as she shows journalists toys that belonged to her nearly 2-year-old granddaughter, Valeria, in her home in El Salvador.Antonio Valladares/AP/Shutterstock
The photo of Óscar and Valeria has been met with anguish, distress and despair. President Trumpsaid he “hate[d] it”while Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro, a former housing secretary, said Wednesday, “Watching that image of Oscar and his daughter Valeria was heartbreaking. It should also piss us all off.”
Many Democratic politicianshave blamed Trump’s immigration policies, arguing that indifference, at the least, is inherent to his decisions and fosters the desolation that drives migrants like Oscar and his daughter to try and cross deserts and rivers. Last year more than 280 people died at the border.
Trump, who campaigned on restricting immigration, has blasted Democrats for refusing to cede to his demands. This week he continued to trumpet his fears about drugs and crime moving north from Mexico — an argument he describes in broad, hyperbolic terms.
“Someday we will finish building a country where these things do not happen,” Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador,said in a statement Tuesday, reacting to Oscar and Valeria’s drowning.
“Someday we will finish building a country where migration is an option and not an obligation,” Bukele said. “In the meantime, we will do as much as we can. God help us.”
Within days of their deaths, El Salvador announced it would cover the costs of returning Óscar and Valeria to their home. Their bodies were expected to arrive on Thursday.
Ávalos “is afflicted. She is suffering,” a Mexican immigration official told the AP. “It is a dream they had to get ahead as a family, the three of them, and she returns in mourning with only the bodies of her family.”
From her house in El Salvador, Rosa spoke of her son and granddaughter while holding some of Valeria’s favorite toys, including a stuffed purple monkey.
“I would say to those who are thinking of migrating, ‘They should think it over,’ ” she told the AP. “Because not everyone can live that American dream you hear about.”
source: people.com
