BORDER PATROL USES TEAR GAS TO DISPERSE WOULD-BE BORDER CROSSERS
by Sharon Rondeau
(Nov. 25, 2018) — At 6:21 p.m. EST Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted that the San Ysidro Port of Entry between the U.S. and Mexico was closed earlier in the day “to ensure public safety in response to a large # of migrants seeking to illegally enter the US.”
In a three-tweet series, Nielsen said that the Customs & Border Patrol (CBP), “law enforcement” and the U.S. Department of Defense “have a robust presence along the SW Border at our POEs (points of entry) and that they responded to “migrants” “throwing projectiles at them.”
According to The Los Angeles Times, the San Ysidro POE is “one of the world’s busiest international crossings.”
Nielsen indicated that the U.S. and Mexico are coordinating their efforts over the “caravan” whose members clearly seek to enter the U.S. and seek political asylum.
The caravan first set out from Honduras in mid-October and has both gained and lost travelers. For the last week, the present group of approximately 4,600 people has been temporarily housed in Tijuana, Mexico.
President Trump has indicated that he will completely “close” the border with Mexico if the “migrants” cannot be contained on the Mexican side.
On Saturday evening, Trump tweeted that an agreement had been reached between the nations wherein Mexico agreed to prohibit the travelers from crossing into the U.S. unless their asylum cases were adjudicated and approved by a U.S. judge. Following a report from The Washington Post affirming the agreement, the AP said that an official from the incoming Mexican administration, set to be seated on December 1, denied that an agreement was in place.
The group in Tijuana contains at least 500 hardened criminals, according to DHS last week.
During the Obama years, “surges” of illegals saw thousands of individuals attain residency in the U.S. by virtue of the fact that a policy Trump has vowed to cease, “Catch & Release,” allowed them to live in American communities while they awaited hearings on their asylum applications. Between 2011 and 2014, a rising number of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) crossed the border and were placed in residential facilities, per U.S. law, with medical, dental, mental-health, educational, recreational and other services provided by the American taxpayer.
“@DHS will not tolerate this type of lawlessness & will not hesitate to shut down POEs for security reasons. We’ll seek to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who destroys federal property, endangers our frontline operators, or violates our sovereignty,” Nielsen tweeted on Sunday.
Nielsen was responding to an attempt made by a group of “migrants” who reportedly “rushed the border fence” on Sunday morning, with some “throwing rocks and bottles” at Border Patrol agents, according to The Washington Post.
The Border Patrol responded by using tear gas, The LA Times reported.
The paper further reported:
Around 11:30 a.m. Sunday, hundreds of people from the caravan rushed across a canal that leads to a pedestrian border crossing. Mexican police in riot gear blocked their way, and a scuffle broke out between police and a couple dozen protesters. After being rebuffed, the migrants massed at another point along train tracks next to the border fence. Some young men tried to climb the fence, and others hopped up on trains holding Honduran flags and signs asking Trump to let them in.
Both Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo have said that the caravan migrants will not be allowed to enter the U.S.
In a separate incident on Sunday, an illegal who had been previously deported crossed into the U.S. in Yuma, AZ, climbed a tree to which he then set fire, and threw rocks at Border Patrol agents, Breitbart reported.