The mother seen in a now-famous photo desperately pulling her daughters away from tear-gas plumes at the US-Mexico border said she never imagined American forces would fire mace canisters at women and children.
“We never thought they were going to fire these bombs where there were children, because there were lots of children,” Maria Meza said in an interview with Reuters.
The 35-year-old mother from Honduras set out to claim asylum at the US border crossing Sunday with her five children, after spending a week in Tijuana, Mexico.
She was part of the hundreds of Central American migrants who approached the border, with some trying to storm the fence.
US Border Patrol agents began to fire tear-gas canisters, and three landed around Meza and her kids.
“The first thing I did was grab my children,” Meza said from a Tijuana migrant shelter.
“I was scared, and I thought I was going to die with them because of the gas.”
A widely-published photo of Meza wearing a shirt with a character from the Disney movie “Frozen,” shows her clutching the arms of her twin 5-year-old daughters Saira and Cheili. Her 13-year-old daughter Jamie can be seen running alongside them.
Meza’s son James nearly fainted when a canister landed near him, while she fell and struggled to get up, she said. A man gave her his hand and pulled her to her feet.
“It wasn’t right,” Meza said. “They know we are human beings, the same as them.”
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