BORDER CHAOS
US fires tear gas as migrants rush fence
A mom and her kids, tear gas exploding behind them, make a desperate dash back from the California border yesterday as US agents repelled migrants trying to storm the fence. The US shut down the border crossing for several hours amid the chaos.
US Border Patrol agents fired tear gas to repel rock-throwing migrants who tried to storm through a border fence separating California and Mexico on Sunday.
Some of the migrants, part of the caravan that has traveled from Central America, threw rocks at border agents while repeatedly approaching the fence, officials said.
US Customs and Border Protection said that several agents were struck by the rocks and that they deployed tear gas and pepper-ball projectiles “to dispel the group because of the risk to agents’ safety.”
Children in the group were screaming and coughing amid the chaos, which a witness said erupted when migrants cut a hole in concertina wire on the Mexican side of a levee.
“We ran, but when you run, the gas asphyxiates you more,” Honduran migrant Ana Zuniga, 23, told The Associated Press while cradling daughter Valery, 3, in her arms.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said her department “will not tolerate this type of lawlessness and will not hesitate to shut down ports of entry for security and public-safety reasons.”
“We will also seek to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who destroys federal property, endangers our frontline operators or violates our nation’s sovereignty,” she added.
Mexico’s Interior Ministry said it would deport almost 500 migrants who were rounded up after trying to “violently” and “illegally” cross the border, according to the BBC.
The clash came after a caravan of several hundred Central American migrants — including women pushing kids in strollers — overwhelmed Mexican cops standing guard near the San Ysidro, Calif., crossing that links San Diego County with Tijuana, Mexico.
The group easily moved through the blockade, carrying hand-painted Honduran and US flags and chanting, “We are not criminals! We are international workers!”
That move prompted the US to suspend all border crossings at San Ysidro at around 11:30 a.m., leading some migrants to split off and “head towards multiple locations along the border,” Customs and Border Protection said in a statement.
“Some attempted to illegally enter
the US through both the northbound and southbound vehicle lanes at the port of entry itself. Those persons were stopped and turned back to Mexico,” the statement said.
Images and videos posted online showed scores of migrants rushing toward the border.
A scuffle broke out when Mexican police in riot gear blocked dozens of migrants who rushed across a canal, according to The Washington Post.
Nielsen said officials closed the San Ysidro crossing “to ensure public safety in response to large numbers of migrants seeking to enter the US illegally.”
She also vowed that federal and local law enforcement, as well as the US military, “will continue to have a robust presence along the southwest border and at our ports of entry to prevent illegal entry or violence.”
Customs and Border Protection said later that both the southbound and northbound lanes had reopened to vehicle traffic.
Earlier this month, President Trump suggested military troops deployed to the border could shoot rock-throwing migrants, but he rescinded those remarks a day later.
The border clash came hours after Trump called on Mexico to keep the migrants from trying to enter the US.
“Would be very SMART if Mexico would stop the Caravans long before they get to our Southern Border, or if originating countries would not let them form,” he tweeted.
More than 5,000 migrants who have traveled in caravans through Mexico are camped out in and around a sports complex in Tijuana with plans to apply for asylum in the US.
But officials at the San Ysidro crossing have been processing fewer than 100 asylum petitions a day, and Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum declared a humanitarian crisis on Friday.
Irineo Mujica of the aid group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, Spanish for “People without Borders,” said Sunday’s march toward the border was supposed to illustrate the migrants’ desperate plight.
“We can’t have all these people here,” Mujica told the AP.