Tweets and the truth

President Donald Trump continues to treat migrants seeking to cross the U.S. border as an invasion, but they are simply desperate people seeking a better life

Our view:

President Donald Trump tweeted the other day that unless our “great law enforcement professionals” are “ALLOWED TO DO THEIR JOB,” we’ll face “bedlam, chaos, injury, and death” from the thousands of migrants who have amassed at the southern border in an attempt to gain asylum in the United States.

On Sunday, we got bedlam, chaos and injury, all right, when some of the migrants approached the border. Reports about exactly what happened vary — some say they were, at least initially, trying to negotiate with U.S. authorities who had prevented their entry; some number of them attempted to scale the fence or otherwise gain entry when they found the border crossing closed; and at least a few reportedly threw bottles and rocks at the U.S. border patrol officials on the other side.

What happened next is not in dispute. The migrants were treated like an invading army — border patrol agents fired tear gas canisters into Mexico. Only a few dozen of the migrants made it across the border, where they were arrested, but the gas choked all those on the other side — men, women and children alike, whether they were protesting peacefully, throwing rocks or caught up as bystanders.

RAMON ESPINOSA/AP A migrant carrying a roll of carpet wipes his face after U.S. border agents fired tear gas at a group of migrants who had pushed past Mexican police at the Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico on Sunday.