Gassing kids at the border
by digby
The Trump administration closed the border at Tijuana today,the world’s busiest crossing, in both directions, stranding vast numbers of people on either side of the border on the busiest day of the holiday week-end.
FOR NO GOOD REASON.
Some Central American migrants, mostly men, tried to breach the border crossing between Tijuana, Mexico and California on Sunday, after pushing past a blockade of Mexican police standing guard near the international border crossing in a bid to pressure the U.S to hear their asylum claims.
In response, U.S. border guards suspended crossings at the the San Ysidro port of entry in California and shot tear gas into Mexico, according to an AP reporter on the scene.
Mexico’s Milenio TV showed images of at least a few of the hundreds of migrants at the border tried to jump over the fence separating the two countries.
The migrants carried hand-painted American and Honduran flags and chanted: “We are not criminals! We are international workers!” The group mostly consisted of men, although some women pushed small children ahead in strollers.
U.S. Border Patrol helicopters flew overhead, while U.S. agents held vigil on foot beyond the wire fence in California. The Border Patrol office in San Diego said via Twitter that pedestrian crossings have been suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry at both the East and West facilities.
Migrants were enveloped with tear gas after U.S. agents shot the gas, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene. Children were screaming and coughing in the mayhem.
Honduran migrant Ana Zuniga, 23, said she saw migrants open a small hole in concertina wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee, at which point U.S. agents fired tear gas at them.
“We ran, but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more,” she told the AP while cradling her 3-year-old daughter Valery in her arms.
And now we are using tear gas on children — in a foreign country.
These people want to turn themselves in to the authorities and claim asylum. That’s all. They have been held in unsanitary pens in Tijuana, virtually designed to make them sick. They left the detention enter today out of desperation.
It’s a horror.
By the way, caravans have come to Tijuana before. The border patrol processed people without all this drama. This is all Trump.
And, by the way, MSNBC and CNN need to think twice before they cover this by showing the same footage of running Latinos on a loop. Maybe they could show the lines of stranded Americans on both sides of the border fuming at Trump’s stupidity.
.