Another Massive Media Screw Up: Viral Photo Used to Prove Family Separation Horror Was of a Girl Who Wasn't Actually Separated

The mainstream media has been blasting a photo of a screaming little girl for a week to prove the inhumanity of family separation at the border. TIME is running the photo, now viral, on the cover of their upcoming July issue with President Trump standing over her and saying, "Welcome to America."

TIME’s new cover: A reckoning after Trump's border separation policy: What kind of country are we? https://t.co/U4Uf8bffoR pic.twitter.com/sBCMdHuPGc
— TIME (@TIME) June 21, 2018

Here's how the photographer described the situation when he took the photo.

“This one was tough for me. As soon as it was over, they were put into a van. I had to stop and take deep breaths,” Moore told TIME Tuesday, describing his reaction to the scene of a two-year-old Honduran girl crying as her mother was being detained in McAllen, Texas. “All I wanted to do was pick her up. But I couldn’t.”

But it turns out, that little girl wasn't separated from her mother at all. Further, her mother hired a smuggler to get them to the U.S. and left the girl's father behind in Honduras. Daily Mail has the exclusive:

I spoke to the father of the little Honduran girl photographed crying at the border. He says he has yet to speak to his wife and daughter but reveals they were never separated and are 'safe' https://t.co/SkZ7VHKlqc
— Karen Ruiz (@_kareruiz) June 21, 2018

The father of the Honduran girl who became the face of the family separation crisis has revealed that he still has not been in touch with his wife or daughter but was happy to learn they are safe.

Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, 32, said that he had not heard from his wife Sandra, 32, who was with his two-year-old daughter Yanela Denise, for nearly three weeks until he saw the image of them being apprehended in Texas.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Hernandez, who lives in Puerto Cortes, Honduras, says that he was told yesterday that his wife and child are being detained at a family residential center in Texas but are together and are doing 'fine

Denis said his wife and daughter were never separated by border control agents and remain together.

Father of the now famous photo of the little girl crying says his wife/child were never separated at any time by authorities, that his wife was seeking a job (not fleeing violence), and that he is upset w/ her for taking his child on the dangerous journey https://t.co/owZH204b2A pic.twitter.com/ruZt263tDu
— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) June 22, 2018

To say the least, this is another tremendous screw up by the leftist media and a perfect example of their ongoing, reckless and irresponsible confirmation bias. Three weeks ago, the same media argued the Trump administration was losing thousands of kids. They weren't. A former senior Obama administration official spoke out in their defense during an interview with NPR.

INSKEEP: Well, that leads us to the next step. HHS - that's the Department of Health and Human Services. Recently, they did a survey of children, like asking what happened to them, where are they now, and 1,475 or so who were supposed to be tracked by the agency were missing. Are those some of these same unaccompanied minors?

MUNOZ: That's exactly who these kids are. Right. So HHS - its job is to place the kids in the least restrictive setting. In the vast majority of cases, those kids had parents in the United States. Most of the time, those parents were also here illegally. So what I think has happened with those missing cases is in many cases those parents and kids have been reunited and they've gone off the grid. They don't want to be contacted by a government agency.

INSKEEP: Wait a minute. When I hear 1,475 kids missing, it sounds like an outrage. Are you telling me I shouldn't be that outraged?

MUNOZ: Well, look, there's always reason to be concerned. This is an agent - a federal agency which placed kids, in most cases, with their own families. That doesn't mean that every placement is terrific, but it's - the most likely case is that these are undocumented families and they don't want contact with the federal government.

After blasting a photo of a screaming little girl who was "separated" from her mother, the leftist media has proven again they're wrong. Really wrong. They've been driving the illegal immigration narrative on this photo non-stop for days.

Will TIME rescind their July issue? Issue a correction? Tell the truth about what's actually happening? What about the endless other outlets that shared the photo? The hundreds of journalists on Twitter?

It appears that the iconic image of the separations policy didn’t involve a separation—all too typical of how a hysterical, advocacy-driven media covers immigration

https://t.co/98tn4D5dfC
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) June 22, 2018