El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said his country was to blame for the death of a father and daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande while trying to reach the US — a tragedy captured in a photo that sparked outrage over the humanitarian crisis at the border.

Bukele told the BBC in an interview published Monday that his own government had to fix the issues that were forcing people to flee the Central American country in record numbers.

Bukele, who took office a month ago, promised he would work to make El Salvador a safer and better place.

Bukele pointed out that the father, Óscar Martínez, and daughter had been fleeing El Salvador, not the US.

“People don’t flee their homes because they want to, people flee their homes because they feel they have to,” he told the network from the capital, San Salvador.

“Why? Because they don’t have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because they don’t have basic things like water, education, health,” he continued.

“We can blame any other country but what about our blame? What country did they flee? Did they flee the United States? They fled El Salvador, they fled our country. It is our fault.”

The photo of the pair lying face down in the Rio Grande shocked the world and intensified the debate about illegal immigration and President Trump’s zero-tolerance policies.

The president blamed Democrats for the deaths.

In 2016, the most recent year for which data are available, one in 10 Salvadorans had no access to safe drinking water or sanitation, according to the UN, and about a third of the country lives below the national poverty line.

The number of illegal immigrants, many of them Salvadoran families, apprehended at the US border has jumped since Trump took office, overwhelming border facilities and personnel.

In the fiscal year to October 2018, the figure was 31,369, but since then it has nearly doubled, according to federal border officials.

In May alone, more than 130,000 illegal immigrants of all nationalities were caught at the border, compared to fewer than 100,000 the month before.

Bukele didn’t let the US off the hook entirely, condemning the government for the treatment of migrants in custody.

But he repeated that El Salvador had to “focus on making our country better, making our country a place where nobody has to migrate” to flee poverty and violence.

“I think migration is a right, but it should be an option, not an obligation. And right now it’s an obligation for a lot of people.”

At least 283 migrants died on the US-Mexico border in 2018, according to Customs and Border Protection.