Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the Republican chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who has called for changes to asylum law to stem the influx of migrants, spoke through tears that were captured on video widely shared on Twitter.
“I realize tragedies happen all over this country — all over this world,” he said. “I don’t want to see another picture like that on the U.S. border. I hope that picture alone will catalyze this Congress, this Senate, this committee to do something.”
President Trump had his own reaction to the photograph.
Before leaving on a trip to meet with world leaders in Japan and South Korea, he told reporters that he had talked with Ms. Pelosi and that he believed the two parties were making progress toward a bipartisan agreement on the funding.
But moments later, he denied any responsibility for the tragedy depicted in the photo, insisting that the blame for the deaths of the migrants fell on Democrats because of their refusal to accede to the president’s demands to change asylum laws.
“They want to have open borders, and open borders mean crime, and open borders mean people drowning in the rivers,” Mr. Trump said. “I hate it, and I know it could stop immediately if the Democrats would change the laws. And then that father, who probably was this wonderful guy, with his daughter, things like that wouldn’t happen.”
Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump went even further in trying to deflect criticism that his administration’s hard-line immigration policies had failed to address the deepening humanitarian crisis on the border, including the detention of children in horrific conditions at Border Patrol facilities.
In a speech to religious conservatives, the president said the border crisis — including the horrific conditions for migrant children held at those facilities — was the result of a “twisted obsession” by Democrats with open borders and said misery among migrants could be avoided if Democrats had “any shred of moral decency on this issue.”