It started with the viral image of a crying two-year-old girl looking up at her mother as she is detained by American border agents.
Charlotte and Dave Willner wanted to do something to help the families being locked up and separated as they crossed into the US.
So they set up a fundraising page on Facebook. Their target was $1500 (£1100), the minimum bond payment for parents to leave detention and be reunited with their children.
Four days later and their campaign, like the photo, has gone viral. More than 138,000 people – driven by the surging controversy over treatment of arriving migrant families – have contributed to raise almost $5.8 million, which will go to the Refugee and Immigrant Centre for Education and Legal Services (Raices), a charity that offers low-cost legal representation to immigrants in Texas.
The Willners have a two-year-old daughter and said the fundraising page was the closest thing to hugging the wailing child they could do.
Behind the Shutter: US-Mexico border
“These aren’t kids we don’t have to care about. They’re like our kids,” Mrs Willner told the San Jose Mercury News by telephone from her office in San Francisco. “When we look at the faces of these children, we can’t help but see our own children’s faces.”
The couple were early employees of Facebook and now work for AirBnb and Pinterest, so an online campaign made sense.
It was launched on Saturday and quickly took off when one of their Silicon Valley friends put up a $25,000 matching donation.
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"We’ve been occasionally crying around the office all day when we check the fundraising totals. There are terrible things happening in the world. And there are many people who are deciding not to look away but to do something."