Tear gas on border is routine, not rotten

Tactic saves lives that immigrants put at risk

Using tear gas against groups of illegal immigrants charging the U.S. border has been called evil and a war crime. But it is actually routine.

President Donald Trump’s critics went gonzo after Border Patrol agents used tear gas to disperse members of a Central American “migrant caravan” who charged the border at the San Ysidro crossing and attacked agents with rocks.

Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii seemed to suggest that the Border Patrol violated the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, though that agreement specifically omits tear gas used for law enforcement purposes. The senator later deleted his remark. Nevertheless, Twitter is alive with this “war crime” misinformation.

Umbrage aside, this is hardly the first time nonlethal chemical weapons have been used at the border. Exactly five years earlier, during the Obama administration, border agents repelled a gang of rock-throwing illegal immigrants using pepper spray. This was just one of 151 uses of pepper spray that year alone, in addition to 27 uses of tear gas without a peep about “war crimes.”

Tear gas was also used at the border in 2007 in response to attacks on border agents. Border Patrol officials argued then that the use of nonlethal force was a potentially life-saving measure, not only for law enforcement officers but also for those throwing the rocks. Stone throwers at the border were fatally shot in 2005 and 2007. A rock-throwing teen was also shot and killed near El Paso in 2010, which the Obama administration claimed was regrettable but justified.

Tear gas had been deployed at least as early as the Carter administration. In April 1980, Border Patrol agents faced off against a group of 500 who had gathered near San Ysidro.

The story was the same then as now — the attempted illegal immigrants began throwing rocks at the border control officers, hitting about 35, and the agents dispersed the rock throwers with tear gas.

By the 1990s, border control agents were given routine training in the use of tear gas and other nonlethal weapons, during which they were exposed to them to understand their effects. This gave rise to an arbitration case between the Justice Department and the National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union, over whether the agents should be pepper-sprayed in training.

The union objected to the training, but the government said it was necessary to increase “the officer’s empathy with victims of the spray.”

According to Justice Department training materials, 75 percent of the effects of tear gas is psychological. That has certainly been the case with latest incident, especially among Trump’s critics. Outrage was sparked particularly by the heart-rending images of women and children fleeing the tear gas attack.

But one should ask why any parent would willfully expose a child to potential harm. After all, it was the same scene when the caravan broke the Mexico/Guatemala border, with men throwing rocks and women and children suffering the inevitable tear gas response. The parents might have known this could happen again; rushing the U.S. border was obviously asking for trouble. For all they knew, the border agents might have opened fire.

But maybe the organizers of the bumrush understood the game all along. San Diego Sector Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott said the move was tactical. The migrants “would push women and children to the front, and then begin, basically, rocking our agents,” he said.

National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd claimed that “they use women and children regularly” as human shields.

And if the incident was planned, it certainly had the desired effect, judging by the overheated response. It was reminiscent of the Vietnam War-era protesters’ tactic of “chicks up front!” The 1960s radicals knew how to manipulate news coverage. Looks like some things never change.