After a tense past few weeks in regards to immigration reform from the Trump administration’s executive order on family separation (and later their repeal of it), TIME magazine has presented their latest cover for the July 2 issue, featuring a heart-wrenching photo illustration of a crying Honduran girl staring into the eyes of President Donald Trump with the caption, “Welcome to America.”
Pulitzer-prize winning photographer John Moore is the man behind the image, and in an interview with TIME magazine, he carefully and painstakingly details the story of the photo.
On an assignment with a border patrol agent near the Rio Grande, Moore and the agent saw a group of asylum seeking people attempting to raft into the country. The agent took Moore up the road where they found the group of mainly women and children walking up the road.
“You could see the fear frankly in their eyes,” Moore says. “In the crowd of people, a mother holding a young girl, and the mother would not set her down…when it came for her turn to be searched she was asked to set down the child. As soon as that little girl’s feet touched the ground she started screaming. It was a very acute case of separation anxiety happening in front of me. And as she looked up at her mother be searched, I photographed her.”
Moore has been photographing families seeking asylum for a number of years, though he said this time was different because they didn’t know what was coming, while he did. “All I wanted to do was pick her up. But I couldn’t,” he says.
The TIME cover is not the first time that the historic magazine has targeted the president and his decision-making. Recently, they used a cover of the president looking at himself in the mirror and seeing his reflection as a king, a cover of Trump depicted as a wrecking ball, and a cover of him and Presidential Nominee Opponent, Hilary Clinton holding a sign reading, “The end is near.”
See the new TIME cover below.