Amid anger over separations, image depicts president and crying two-year-old next to the caption ‘Welcome to America’

Donald Trump has always proudly paraded his Time Magazine covers but the latest may not make it on to the walls at the golf club.

The powerful image on this week’s cover depicts the US president looking down at a sobbing two-year-old girl next to the caption “Welcome to America”.

The girl is from a photograph taken at the US border by Getty photographer John Moore this week. Showing the toddler’s distress while her mother is searched and detained, the image has become a defining symbol of the impact of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, where parents and children entering the US illegally have been separated at the border.

The separation of families, with children and even babies placed in detention centres or “tender age shelters”, has prompted protests and outcry, though this girl’s father, Denis Valera, told Reuters she was kept with her mother, Sandra Sanchez, during their detention in the Texas border town of McAllen.

Moore described his own heartbreak capturing these separations at the US-Mexico border. “As a photojournalist covering this story for years, and as the father of three children including a toddler, it was personally very hard for me to photograph,” he said.

After enormous public backlash, Trump signed an executive order reversing the policy.

Trump has regularly made a point of referencing the number of times he has made it on to the cover of Time and last year boasted that he had “the all-time record” – a claim quickly rebutted by the magazine. In June 2017, Time asked Trump to take down fake covers featuring him from the walls of his golf clubs.

At a press conference in Singapore for the Kim Jong-un summit last week, Trump called out to Time magazine reporter Brian Bennett. “Am I on the cover again this week?” Trump asked rhetorically. “Boy, have I … so many covers.”