They Wanted to Raise $1,500 for Immigrant Families at the Border. They Got Over $20 Million.

It all started with a viral photo of a toddler crying as her mother was detained at the border. Charlotte and Dave Willner saw it on the internet, like so many other people, and responded by starting a fund-raising page that would rapidly become the largest single fund-raiser in Facebook’s history. The Bay Area couple had been struck by the sight of the anguished 2-year-old Honduran girl looking up at her mother, who was being searched by a United States border patrol agent in southern Texas. They have a 2-year-old daughter of their own, and the image made them want to help the families being separated under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy. On Saturday morning, they started a Facebook fund-raising page for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or Raices, a nonprofit organization that provides low-cost legal defense services to immigrant and refugee families in Texas. The Willners set a modest goal of $1,500. It has since garnered more than $20 million from more than 525,000 people, stunning the staff at Raices.

Read more at The New York Times.