Tuesday November 27, 2018
Serving the Rio Hondo Community
Volume 57 Issue 12
Outrage Over U.S. Agents T hrowing Tear Gas At Asylum Seekers
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY SABRINA TORRES / EPM US border in San Ysidro, Baja California was closed for hours as border patrol unleashed gas upon migrants. The US is one of the few first world countries to have a militarized border patrol. CYNTHIA RIZO
News Editor cynthia.rizo1559@my.riohondo.com
U.S. border agents fired tear gas on hundreds of migrants approaching the border from Mexico after some of them attempted to get through the fencing and wire separating the two countries. American authorities shut down border crossings from the city where thousands are waiting to apply for asylum. Early Sunday morning, a group of Central American staged a peaceful march to
appeal for the U.S. to speed up the asylum claims process but their demonstration devolved as they neared the crossing with the U.S. and some saw an opportunity to breach the border. Mexican police had kept them from walking over a bridge leading to the Mexican port of entry, but the migrants pushed past officers to walk across the Tijuana River below the bridge. More police carrying plastic riot shields were on the other side, but migrants walked along the river to an area where only
an earthen levee and barbed wire separated them from U.S. Border Patrol agents. Honduran Ana Zuniga, 23, also said she saw migrants opening 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,” Zuniga told the AP while cradling her 3-year-old daughter Valery in her arms. After they were prevented from entering the port of entry, some of the migrants
“attempted to breach legacy fence infrastructure along the border and sought to harm CBP personnel by throwing projectiles at them,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen said in a statement. “DHS 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 front-line operators, or violates our nation’s sovereignty,” Nielsen said.
“Border Patrol agents deployed tear gas to dispel the group because of the risk to agents’ safety,” the agency said on Twitter. The mayor of Tijuana said on Sunday that he would not let the migrants’ actions damage the city’s relationship with its neighbors across the border. Residents of Tijuana work, study and visit the United States each day, and the border closures affect them, too, Juan Manuel Gastélum Buenrostro said on Twitter on Sunday. (Continued on Page 3)