This is the backstory behind that viral photo of a crying Honduran girl

The heart-wrenching photo of a 2-year-old Honduran girl in tears, peering up at her mother and a Border Patrol agent, has quickly become the defining image of President Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, which for weeks resulted in the separation of immigrant children from their parents. While the image, taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John Moore, has spread like wildfire, appearing on the cover of Time as well as on this website, CBS News writes that the picture "might be a little bit misleading," because the daughter and mother were not actually separated, as other families have been.

"We were patrolling the border. It was after 10 o'clock at night," recalled Border Patrol agent Carlos Ruiz, who was the one to come across mother Sandra Sanchez and her daughter in Texas. "We asked her to set the kid down in front of her ... So the kid immediately started crying as she set her down. I personally went up to the mother and asked her, 'Are you doing okay? Is the kid okay?' and she said, 'Yes. She's tired and thirsty. It's 11 o'clock at night.'"

Embed from Getty Images//

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Moore, who captured the photo during a ride-along with Border Agents, feared the mother and daughter would be separated after being taken to a Customs and Border Protection processing center. "I took only a few photographs and was almost overcome with emotion myself," Moore told Getty Images' blog "Foto."

The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, claims to have spoken to the father of the 2-year-old, who told the paper, "You can imagine how I felt when I saw that photo of my daughter. It broke my heart." Read more of the backstory behind the picture at "Foto," and about the mother and daughter's status at CBS News.