Photographer reveals story behind iconic image of fleeing migrants at Mexico border

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TIJUANA, Mexico — It’s the image from the unfolding crisis in Tijuana seen around the world: a migrant mom and her young children running away from a smoking tear gas canister with barbed wire and a forbidding metal wall in the background.

Both children are barefoot, clad only in T-shirts, and one appears to be wearing a pull-up diaper.

The woman clutching their arms and dragging them out of harm's way is wearing black leggings and a T-shirt emblazoned with the smiling cartoon faces of the Anna and Elsa from the Disney movie "Frozen."

That jarring portrait was captured on camera Sunday by veteran Reuters photographer Kim Kyung-Hoon moments after a group of Central American migrants approached the border crossing into San Diego and were forced backwards by tear gas canisters hurled by U.S. border agents.

"When the tear gas started, some people were screaming and everybody started running away,” Kim told NBC News on Monday. "I saw the woman and two children running away. One girl was barefoot from the beginning. The other was wearing beach sandals and lost them in the chaos."

NBC News also tracked down the woman, Maria Mesa, a 39-year-old mother of five from Honduras, inside a tent at the Benito Juarez Shelter in Tijuana.

"I grabbed my children and ran," Mesa said of her 5-year-old twin daughters Saira and Sheilly.

Mesa said her 3-year-old son James, who does not appear in the picture, was also with them and fainted after getting a lung-full of gas.

"One of them could have died," she said.

Kim said Mesa "was travelling with five children."

"Their father lives in Louisiana and they are trying to reach him," he said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/photographer-reveals-story-behind-iconic-photo-fleeing-migrants-mexico-border-n940271