The two-year-old Honduran girl who has become a symbol of family separation at the border was never separated from her mother, according to her father.
Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, who still lives in Honduras, told the Daily Mail he was told this week that his wife Sandra and daughter Yanela Denise are being held together in a family residential center in Texas and were never separated by border agents.
[Update: Time magazine issues major correction to illegal immigrant family separations piece]
“You can imagine how I felt when I saw that photo of my daughter. It broke my heart. It’s difficult as a father to see that, but I know now that they are not in danger,” Hernandez said. “They are safer now than when they were making that journey to the border.”
A picture of Yanela Denise was taken while she was crying during her mother’s arrest, and she quickly became the face of children who were being separated from their parents at the border under Trump’s zero tolerance policy.
Yanela Denise even appeared on the cover of Time magazine with Trump looking down on her.
Hernandez said his wife spoke of going to the U.S. with their daughter for a “better future,” but he did not support the idea because he didn’t want to put his daughter through the process of illegally crossing the border.
“I didn’t support it. I asked her, ‘why? Why would she want to put our little girl through that?’” Hernandez said. “But it was her decision at the end of the day.”
