NEWS
TICKER
New info in
citizenship
Census battleDays away from the
deadline to print
forms, Democrats on
the House Oversight
Committee said on
June 25 they had new
evidence the Trump
Administration had
political reasons for
wanting to ask about
citizenship on the
2020 Census. Critics
say the question
will lead minority
populations to be
undercounted.Venezuelan
officials
detainedVenezuelan authorities
arrested six members
of the country’s
military and police
forces on June 21,
according to activists
and the detainees’
families. President
Nicolás Maduro has
increased pressure on
the opposition since
a military uprising led
by Juan Guaidó failed
on April 30.Charlottesville
driver asks for
mercyLawyers for James
Alex Fields, who
pleaded guilty to
federal hate crimes
after he ran his car into
counterprotesters in
Charlottesville, Va.,
in 2017—killing
antiracism activist
Heather Heyer—asked
a judge on June
not to sentence him to
life in prison, arguing
“retribution has limits.”The bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter Valeria in the Rio GrandeTwenTy-Three-monTh-old valeria
and her father Óscar Alberto Martínez
Ramírez drowned trying to cross the border
from Mexico into the U.S., according to the
Associated Press. After journeying from
El Salvador on April 3, the family were
unable to set a date to request asylum in
the U.S. and instead attempted to cross the
Rio Grande. The photo, taken on June 24
by journalist Julia Le Duc, has been shared
internationally by news outlets and on
social media, and sparked international
outrage—both from migrant advocates who
argue that such an image will galvanize
action and by those who consider the
photo exploitative.
For an activist like Fernando Garcia,
director of the Border Network for Human
Rights, the photo is a turning point in the
immigration debate, and he compared
it to the 2015 photo of a drowned Syrian
refugee, 3-year-old Alan Kurdi, on a
Turkish beach. “People have become
numbers; they’ve become statistics,” Garcia
says. “People talk about immigrants in the
absence of their humanity. As sad as it is, I
think we need to show the photo.”
Novelist Luis Alberto Urrea, who has
written about migration, called the photo
humanizing. “I have avoided those kinds of
photos all my career and in all my books,”
Urrea tells TIME. “At a moment like this,
maybe this step has to be taken.”
But not all agree that publishing the
photograph was right. The National
Association of Hispanic Journalists
condemned the use of the image, calling
the Associated Press’s publication
“exploitative.” “Men, women and children
cross the border daily, often escaping terror
with hopes of a better life, knowing the
peril that awaits them as they attempt to
make the long journey to America.”
For Luis Hernández, a multimedia
journalist at Univision in El Paso, Texas, the
photograph was itself a point of departure.
“You need to get all the information,” he
says. “Show people that this person had
a name, had a history, had context, had
loved ones.” —JaSmine agUileraIMMIGRATION
A shocking photo captures the
cost of the border crisis