Trump Strongly Defends Use Of Tear Gas On Caravan Migrants

SAN DIEGO (AP) - President Donald Trump strongly defends the use of tear gas in the United States on the Mexican border to repel a crowd of migrants including both angry stone throwers and crying children and who cry.

Critics have described the action of border agents as exaggeration, but Trump has maintained a hard line.

"They were rushed by very tough people and used tear gas," Trump said Monday after the meeting yesterday. "This is the end result: no one comes to our country unless they enter legally."

At a round table in Mississippi later on Monday, Trump appeared to acknowledge the children were affected and asked, "Why does a father rush into an area where he knows that tear gas is forming and are going to be formed? My boy? "

He said it was "a very small form of tear gas" which he called "very safe".

Without presenting any evidence, he also claimed that some of the women were not really parents, but "hoarders" who stole children so that they would be more likely to receive asylum in the United States.

The confrontation on the border between San Diego and Tijuana has brought to light two opposing discourses on the caravan of migrants who hope to seek asylum but remain in the line of sight of Mexicans. Trump describes them as a threat to US national security, intent on exploiting US asylum law, but others insist he exaggerates to stir up fears and realize their political objectives.

The large size of the caravan makes it unusual.

"I think it's so incredible for everyone to suspend their own fears and political agendas in the caravan," said Andrew Selee, chair of the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank studying immigration. "You can call it fear, you can call it hope, you can call it a sign of human misery, you can hang the angle you want."

Trump rails against migrant caravans as dangerous groups consisting mainly of single men. This vision was largely highlighted in his speeches during the mid-term election campaign, while many were hundreds of miles away, traveling on foot. Officials said some 500 members are criminals, but they did not explain this by explaining why they think that. On Monday, Trump tweeted the caravan at the border that included "cold stone criminals".

Mario Figueroa, director of the social services department in Tijuana who oversees operations in the sports complex where most of the migrants remain in the caravan, said that as of the remaining 4,938, 933 were women, 889 were children and 3.105 were men. which includes parents traveling with families with single men.

The US military announced Monday that nearly 300 soldiers deployed in South Texas and Arizona as part of a border security mission had been transferred to California for similar work. The role of the army is largely limited to erecting barriers along the border and providing transport and logistical support to customs and border protection.

Democratic lawmakers and immigrant rights groups have criticized the Sunday tactics of border agents.

"These children are barefoot, in childbirth, suffocated by tear gas," California Governor-elect Gavin Newsom wrote. "The women and children who have left their lives behind, in search of peace and asylum, have found themselves with violence and fear, not my America."

Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection of the United States. Kevin McAleenan, UU., Said that the administration's concerns regarding the caravan "have been confirmed".

McAleenan said hundreds, if not more than 1,000 people, had tried to speed up the vehicle lanes at the San Ysidro crossing. The Mexican authorities estimated the number of spectators at 500. The chaos followed what began as a peaceful march to appeal to the United States to speed up the processing of asylum claims.

After being arrested by the Mexican authorities, the migrants were divided into groups. On the west side of the crossing, some have tried to cross a barbed wire fence in a concrete dam that separates the two countries. On the east side, some removed a fence panel made up of surplus steel steel mats from the military to create an opening of about 4 feet, through which a group of over 30 people crossed each other, according to a US official. public and spoke on condition of anonymity. Others have done it on a steel fence further east.

McAleenan said four officers were beaten with stones but were not injured because they were wearing protective gear.

Border protection officers released pepper gas balls in addition to tear gas in what officials said were decisions made by officers at the scene. US troops deployed at the border on Trump's orders did not participate in the operation.

"The agents on stage, in their professional judgment, made the decision to address these attacks with less lethal devices," McAleenan told reporters.

The scene recalled the 1980s and early 1990s, when large groups of migrants crossed the vehicle lanes in San Ysidro and submerged border police officers in the surrounding streets and fields.

US authorities made 69 arrests on Sunday. Mexican authorities said 39 people were arrested in Mexico.

The incident left many migrants feeling that they have lost all chance of having to submit asylum claims.

Isauro Mejía, 46, of Cortes, Honduras, looked for a cup of coffee Monday morning after being a victim of Sunday's crash.

"The way things happened yesterday ... I think there is no possibility," he said.

Mexico's Interior Ministry said in a statement that it would immediately deport those arrested and enhance security.

Border patrol officers are free to use a less lethal force. It must be both "objectively reasonable and necessary to carry out the tasks of policing" and must be used when other techniques are not sufficient to control violent or disordered subjects.

Last week, Trump gave Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis the explicit power to use military troops to protect customs and border protection officers at the border, with deadly force if necessary. Mattis was also authorized to temporarily detain illegal immigrants in case of violence against the Border Patrol. Mattis told reporters that this did not change the military mission and that he would use the new authorities only in response to a request from Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He said there had not yet been such a request.

With the caravan as a backdrop, Trump used the powers of national security to circumvent the long-standing immigration law and deny asylum to anyone caught crossing the border illegally. However, a court left these settlements in abeyance after the trial of civil liberties groups. During Thanksgiving, the president warned of "chaos, chaos, injury and death" if the courts blocked their efforts to tighten immigration regulations.

But it is also possible that Sunday's confrontation is due to growing desperation caused by tougher policies, said Rachel Schmidtke, associate of the Migration Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of the Institute of Academic Studies of Mexico.

"This situation is degenerating into a self-fulfilling prophecy," he said. "The more you tighten, the more it artificially creates something that did not exist, but now it's starting to turn into a crisis."