Facebook fundraiser peddling 'fake news' photo of crying Honduran girl raises insane amount of money

A Facebook fundraiser has raked in nearly $20 million promoting the viral picture of the crying Honduran girl who became the image of the outrage against the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" illegal immigration policy.

Money continues to pour in despite the fact that the TIME magazine cover that used it to make a political point was debunked.

What are the details?

Over the last 8 days, more than 500,000 people have donated to the crowd-sourcing campaign for a whopping total of $19.7 million as of Saturday afternoon.

The purpose of the fundraiser, according to organizers Charlotte and Dave Willner, is to raise money to "reunite" the child with her parents. All proceeds are being sent to The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, which provides immigrants with legal services.

However, the girl at the center of the controversy and the fundraiser, which was featured by TIME magazine on its front cover this week, didn't fit the mainstream media narrative after a reporter found the girl's father and learned the real story behind the image.

In fact, according to the Getty Images photographer who captured the image, the girl was only separated from her mother for about 10 seconds while Border Patrol agents searched her mother.

Indeed, the girl's father, Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, said his daughter wasn't crying because she was separated from her mother at the border, but instead because her mother was being detained for illegally entering the U.S. After their detainment, the mother and daughter were placed in a residential center together.

"You can imagine how I felt when I saw that photo of my daughter. It broke my heart. It's difficult as a father to see that, but I know now that they are not in danger. They are safer now than when they were making that journey to the border," Hernandez told the Daily Mail.