Report: Migrant Caravan Members Pushed Women, Children to Front of Line To Avoid Tear Gas
As the thousands-strong caravan of Central American migrants made its way through Mexico toward the U.S. southern border over the past month, the liberal media worked overtime to downplay the threat and frame the approaching group as little more than harmless and innocent women and children seeking legally to obtain asylum in America.
Of course, conservative and independent journalists who actually investigated the caravan first-hand reported that the “innocent women and children” made up only a small portion of the total group.
The vast majority of the caravan is made up of military-aged men, most of whom were coming to America for economic reasons, some of whom were known criminals and some who openly expressed their intent to illegally enter the U.S.
The stretched out caravan began to reach the Mexican border city of Tijuana shortly after the Nov. 6 midterm elections in the U.S. — so much for that “fear-mongering-for-the-election” threat never arriving — and on Sunday a bold attempt was made by several hundred of the group to breach a small gap in the border fence and gain illicit entry into America, an attempt that thankfully was stopped by U.S. Border Patrol agents and Mexican law enforcement officials.
The Daily Caller reported that the effort to rush the border was successfully stymied by the use of pepper balls and tear gas canisters — utilized by agents and officers on both sides of the border — which only came into use after numerous migrants had pelted border agents and police officers with rocks, broken chunks of concrete and glass bottles.
Now some of the agents directly involved in or briefed on the incident have spoken out about what transpired, and more than a few revealed that they had witnessed young rock-throwing men of the caravan using the women and children as human shields to protect themselves against the anticipated response from the Border Patrol agents.
During an appearance Monday morning on CNN, U.S. Border Patrol San Diego Sector Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott was asked about the use of pepper balls and tear gas against the throng of migrants, which included women and children. He clued the CNN host and viewers into exactly how those women and children had been strategically utilized by the caravan’s male troublemakers.
“So, the use of those less-than-lethal techniques … when the threat is to our personnel or to protect others, you’ve gotta do what you gotta do,” Scott said. “What I find unconscionable is that people would intentionally take children into the situation.”
“What we saw over and over yesterday was that the group — the caravan, as we call them — would push women and children toward the front and then begin basically ‘rocking’ our agents,” he continued.
Scott added that agents specifically target their responses toward the instigators in the crowd, but readily admitted that “once that chemical is released, it does go through the air,” and can impact all who are in the area, including himself and his own agents.
The Daily Caller also spoke with Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, who confirmed that several of his agents had been struck by rocks and other projectiles. He noted that the male members of the caravan “use women and children regularly” to shield themselves from arrest or retribution for their actions.
Judd said he viewed the border-rushing incident on Sunday as “unprecedented,” and further explained that male illegal immigrants are well known for abandoning women and children when being chased by authorities, as they know that the women and children will slow Border Patrol agents long enough for them to make their own escape.
Separately, in a Monday afternoon appearance on Fox News, Judd described the rushing of the border with women and children in tow as “absolutely monstrous” and insisted that the response the group received from the Border Patrol agents was “appropriate,” considering the level of danger posed to agents and the broader community.
“They pushed women and children up front and then behind those women and children, they started throwing rocks, cement bricks, they started throwing bottles at our Border Patrol agents,” said Judd. “And so it became a very dangerous situation, not just for our agents, but it also became a dangerous situation for the public at large.
“We were forced to use the action that we used, and it was the appropriate level of action,” he continued. “We did not use kinetic force on any children, we launched tear gas into the area which then caused the group to disperse, and we were able to get control of it.”
To be sure, the image of frightened women and children scrambling to avoid the tear gas is admittedly a terrible thing to see, and the liberal media is certainly making as much hay out of those images as they possibly can to further promote the “innocent women and children” narrative.
What the liberal media is studiously avoiding, but Border Patrol agents are making certain to mention, is that the women and children were specifically placed in a position where they would come under “fire” from Border Patrol agents responding to the hundreds of men rushing the border fence by the caravan itself.
It was an obvious effort to both diminish the effectiveness of the agents’ response and to create the apprearance that agents were attacking helpless women and children.
The use of innocent women and children as human shields by members of the migrant caravan during their assault on the border is nothing short of despicable, and agents have every right to speak out against such disgusting tactics.
Those same agents have a duty to appropriately respond to the threats posed against them, regardless of whoever else may have been dragged into the middle of the situation by individuals intent on breaking U.S. border and immigration laws.
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