The president of El Salvador has told Sky News his country is to blame for migrants making the dangerous journey to the US in search of a better life.
Nayib Bukele – in his first broadcast interview since being elected – was speaking after a Salvadorian migrant and his young daughter made headlines around the world when they were pictured drowned as they tried to reach America.
He said: "It's our fault – they felt that fleeing the country, crossing three borders, a desert, a river [where] they finally drowned – they felt that was safer than staying here… Why would people take those risks?"
The photo showed Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter Valeria side-by-side in shallow water along the bank of the Rio Grande on the Mexican side of the US border.
On Tuesday, authorities were also searching for a two-year-old girl after a woman from Haiti said she had lost her daughter while crossing the river.
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Border agents say they are rescuing people from the water nearly every day.
Around a third of the people in El Salvador – a small but densely populated central American country – live in poverty. There is also a big problem with violent gangs drawing in young people who cannot find jobs.
More from El Salvador
![President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.](https://e3.365dm.com/19/07/768x432/skynews-el-salvador-nayib-bukele_4708558.jpg?20190703074605)
Thousands of Salvadorians are among those making the perilous trip north to try to enter the US.
But President Bukele, 37, rejected Donald Trump's suggestion that his plan for a wall would have saved Oscar Ramirez and his daughter.
He told Sky News that constructing a barrier on the Mexico-US border would be futile.
"If they build a wall migrants will build a tunnel, they will go through the sea, or they will go to the sides of the wall, a wall would never stop anything," he said.
"Probably, a wall would cause more deaths."
![Parts of the border already have a wall, such as here dividing Tijuana and San Diego County](https://e3.365dm.com/19/01/768x432/skynews-wall-san-diego_4538854.jpg?20190106054400)
Pictures of detention centres packed with migrants held after trying to illegally enter America have also caused concern, with claims that the overcrowding means some cannot even use the toilet.
A US watchdog described "dangerous overcrowding" at the Rio Grande facilities, with one manager calling it a "ticking time bomb".
"We have to come up with solutions fast because this can become a humanitarian crisis – it is a humanitarian crisis – but it can become something worse," said Mr Bukele
El Salvador was one of the countries reportedly described as a "s***hole" by President Trump during a meeting in January 2018 – and President Bukele admitted his country has a huge task in improving infrastructure and living standards for its 6.4 million people.
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