Dramatic photo captures migrant mom pleading with border guard

July 26, 2019

A photograph of a Guatemalan mother holding her 6-year-old son and pleading with a Mexican National Guard member to let them go into the U.S. is the latest dramatic image to depict the plight of migrants. A photographer with the Reuters news agency captured Ledy Perez’s encounter in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, earlier this week.

Jose Luis Gonzalez’s photograph shows Perez crouching on a dusty road and holding her son close, crying into his chest as the service member stands nearby with his weapon hanging from his shoulder. “The woman begged and pleaded with the National Guard to let them cross … she wanted to cross to give a better future” to her son, Gonzalez told Reuters.

The news agency reports the service member, who didn’t provide his name, didn’t display any “overt aggression” toward the mother and her son near the dry riverbed of the Rio Grande that serves as the border between Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, Texas. A spokesman for Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador told Reuters the service member was letting Perez know of the dangers of crossing into the U.S.

When the service member wasn’t looking, Perez and her son made a break for it and crossed the border. U.S. border agents took them into custody, Guatemalan officials told Reuters.

Guatemalan migrant Ledy Perez embraces her son Anthony while asking a member of the Mexican National Guard to let them cross into the United States from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, July 22, 2019. Reuters/Jose Luis Gonzalez

Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemala’s consul general in Del Rio, Texas, told Reuters Perez and her son were in good condition at a U.S. Border Patrol station in New Mexico.

Guatemalan migrant Ledy Perez and her son Anthony cross the Rio Bravo river to enter illegally into the United States after escaping from members of the Mexican National Guard, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico July 22, 2019. Jose Luis Gonzalez / REUTERS