By AFP Staff

By now most people have seen the heartbreaking story of the young Honduran girl crying while peering up at her mother, who is surrounded and being patted down by Border Patrol agents. The assumption here was that the mother and her daughter were about to be torn apart as the child is sent to a children’s facility while her mother faces charges for illegally entering the U.S.

While the photograph being promoted by the mainstream media conveys the immediate terror of the young girl, it turns out the high drama being pushed by special interest groups and the mainstream media is fake. Of course, it fails to tell you what actually happened next to the woman and her child.

UK tabloid The Daily Mail reportedly tracked down the father, Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, in Honduras. According to their report, the mother and daughter, Sandra, 32, and her two-year-old daughter Yanela Denise, have not been separated. Instead, the two were sent—together—to a family facility near the U.S. border.

More importantly, the narrative that the two were fleeing the horrors of Honduras is also patently false.

The father said that the mother and child made the dangerous journey without talking to him first. The couple has three other children, son Wesly, 14, and daughters Cindy, 11, and Brianna, six, yet the mother chose only to bring the youngest child.

“I didn’t support it,” he said. “I asked her, why? Why would she want to put our little girl through that? But it was her decision at the end of the day.”

While the father conceded that it is hard to find a decent job in the Central American country, he said he actually has a good one.

“I wouldn’t risk my life [to be smuggled across the border],” he said. “It’s hard to find a good job here and that’s why many people choose to leave. But I thank God that I have a good job here. And I would never risk my life making that journey.”

He added that he is not angry at his wife for taking his daughter away and paying human smugglers $6,000 to sneak them across the U.S. border.

“I don’t have any resentment for my wife, but I do think it was irresponsible of her to take the baby with her in her arms because we don’t know what could happen,” he said.

The mother and daughter were arrested by Border Patrol as they, along with a larger group of illegal immigrants, attempted to cross the Rio Grande River in the middle of the night on makeshift rafts.

“You can imagine how I felt when I saw that photo of my daughter,” concluded the father. “It broke my heart. It’s difficult as a father to see that, but I know now that they are not in danger. They are safer now than when they were making that journey to the border.”