NEW YORK—On Thursday, June 21, Times magazine released their July 2 edition of their magazine with a cover photo of a Honduran girl crying and President Trump looking over her with the words “Welcome to America.” The photo of the 2-year-old was taken by photographer John Moore.
The photo was captioned, “A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the U.S.-Mexico border in McAllen, Texas on June 12, 2018. The asylum seekers had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents before being sent to a processing center for possible separation.”
After the photo went viral, Border Patrol Agent Carlos Ruiz who conducted the search spoke to CBS News about the photo.
“I personally went up to the mother and asked her, ‘Are you doing okay? Is the kid okay?’ the mother then replied, ‘Yes. She’s tired and thirsty. It’s 11 o’clock at night.” The alleged separation that John Moore wrote of never happened. Agents asked the mother to put her down while they searched her and then the child was picked up right after. The mom and child were never detained separately.
The Times released a correction to their error, but stuck by their cover photo of President Trump and the Honduran girl. Edward Felsenthal, Editor-in-Chief at Times magazine said the photo “became the most visible symbol of the ongoing immigration debate in America for a reason.”
