When the image of Alan Kurdi’s corpse was was seared into our international conscience as a symbol of the Syrian civil war, he was likely 3 years old. Kurdi’s death was not collateral damage. Syrian dictator Bashar Assad does not gas his own civilians by accident, and the Islamic State hardly pretends to be anything less than a cult of death. Kurdi’s parents likely felt they had no choice but to leave because they didn’t. They could either wait to die at the hands of Syrian aggressors or take a chance that ultimately proved to be fatal.
International law accepts that the persecution Kurdi’s family faced was grounds for seeking asylum. Though the question of Kurdi’s attempt to obtain refugee status in Canada became a heated political issue, the real barrier to Canada welcoming Kurdi’s family as refugees was the Turkish government’s refusal to issue an exit visa. And so it’s at least understandable that Kurdi’s parents decided to gamble with their lives.
Given all that background, it is astonishing to watch the media attempt to draw some sort of parallel between Kurdi and Angie Valeria Martinez, who along with her father washed ashore dead, drowned in the Rio Grande. Yes, both children’s deaths are tragic, but they weren’t caused by the same impulse. One occurred as a family understandably fled certain death. The other was due to the brash, illegal, and reckless actions of her parents. And if you like, throw in some added blame for the Democratic Party leaders, who chose to make a political point by refusing to fund asylum courts at ports of entry.
Martinez’s family were not refugees. They had no legitimate asylum claim, and they admitted as much. Rosa Ramirez, Martinez’s paternal grandmother conceded to Reuters that her son Oscar attempted to illegally immigrate between American ports of entry for economic and not safety reasons.
El Salvador is not a dictatorship. Its government was not persecuting the Martinez family. Even if it had been, Mexico would have been a safe place for them to remain. And Mexico, even though it hasn’t inked a “safe third country” deal with the United States, did grant a humanitarian visa to Martinez and her parents in Tapachula, close to the Mexican border.
Rather than accept this, the girl’s father brought her and her mother to the American southern border. This is where the recklessness of Democrats and the young girl’s parents came together to cause her death.
For months, Democrats have been sticking it to Trump by refusing to fund asylum courts at our ports of entry. This has caused widespread delays in processing migrants seeking asylum. Apparently, Martinez’s parents made calls to American courts, but her mother, Tania Vanessa Avalos, says that since they could not acquire an appointment after spending some two months in Matamoros, just opposite the border of Brownsville, Texas, the father decided they would illegally cross the Rio Grande.
Again, they were not fleeing any immediate danger. They just wanted to be in the U.S. And so Martinez’s father dragged her across the roaring river. He succeeded in landing the girl, a month shy of her second birthday, on the American shore. But what happens next is so evil, so vilely gruesome, that I ask that you brace yourself to think of what this toddler thought as she found herself drowned to death.
The father left her on the bank. He abandoned her on the shore to head back to find his wife, an able-bodied adult, while a human still technically in the throes of infancy saw her father charging into currents.
She leaped after him. She followed him into the growing fury of the Rio Grande’s waves. He caught her, but it was too late. The currents swallowed them both and washed their bodies onto the shore. The girl’s mother watched in horror the ramifications of her complicity in her husband’s crime.
The U.S. needs a safe third country agreement ensuring that the Mexican government grant asylum to refugees crossing their second border. Second, Democrats must snap out of the theatrics and refund courts so those at real risk on our southern border see prompt court dates in the states. And finally, migrants must ask themselves whether their grievances, legally and morally, justify the risk of killing their children in violation of international law.
