Is it legal to use tear gas against migrants?

US border patrol agents fired tear gas at migrants seeking to enter the southwestern border, saying they were throwing stones and bottles.

"Is it legal, is it moral, is it true, what is going on here?" tweeted Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, November 25.

Schatz would also have sent, but eventually deleted, a tweet asking if the tear gas was "consistent with the chemical weapons conventions"? Schatz later on November 25 tweeted that he "deleted the one on chemical weapons because I do not know enough about what happened." Does not that sound excessive to you? "

A lot debate about social media users Are tear gas chemical weapons and, if so, why were they used against migrants? Tear gas is allowed in the application of national law to control riots. But it is a chemical weapon if it is used as a method of warfare. It's forbidden on the battlefield.

Migrant caravan and use of tear gas at the border

Thousands of Central American migrants are on the Mexican side of the US-Mexico border in the hope of entering the United States.

Many flee gang violence and seek asylum in the United States. They are part of migrant caravans that started from Honduras a few weeks ago. The group includes men, women and children.

The migrants would camp in a stadium in Tijuana, near the border area between Tijuana and San Diego. According to reports in the press, hundreds of them left the stadium on 25 November and headed for the border, some with posters and placards, to defend their arguments and to enter in the USA. The New York Times reported that at one point the march had "deviated from all control" and that "hundreds of people had tried to evade a blockade of the Mexican police and had run to a police station. giant border leading to San Diego ". Video shows some migrants throwing stones at a fence.

Carla L. Provost, chief of the US Border Patrol, told Fox News on November 26 that agents had used tear gas to defend themselves.

"Our agents have been assaulted," Provost said. "A large group rushed into the area and threw stones and bottles at my men and women, putting them in danger, as well as other members of the caravan."

The answer was needed to "disperse them from the region," she said.

Rodney S. Scott, chief patrol officer for the San Diego area, also told CNN that US officials had arrested 42 people, mostly adult men, who had entered the United States.

Scott said the agents "fired tear gas to protect themselves and the border" after migrants threw stones and debris at the agents. At least three officers were struck by stones but protected by their tactical equipment: helmets, shields and bulletproof vests. Some border patrol vehicles were damaged, he said.

Tyler Q. Houlton, spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security, who oversees US customs and border protection, November 26 tweeted CBP "has always maintained the right to protect itself responsibly against those who wish to harm them during their important and dangerous tasks." For example, he tweeted a 2013 San Diego Union-Tribune article in which it was reported that border patrol officers used pepper spray against a group of about 100 migrants who threw stones. and bottles on the agents.

"Border patrol agents have already used gas on the southwestern border and no law seems to have banned it, but the most important question is whether such action was necessary to maintain the law." Order and protect lives, "said Alex Nowrasteh, a leader. Immigration Policy Analyst at the Cato Libertarian Institute. "We will have a better picture of this in the near future."

Is tear gas a chemical weapon?

Tear gas, a type of riot control agent, is considered a chemical weapon if it is used as a method of warfare, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. body responsible for the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The United States is one of the 193 parties to the convention.

Member states are allowed to possess riot control agents and use them for national law enforcement purposes, said the organization.

"The riot control agents are intended to temporarily incapacitate a person by causing irritation to the eyes, mouth, throat, lungs and skin," the group said on its website.

As we noted in a 2014 report on the use of tear gas by law enforcement officials during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the riot control officers were " the subject of long heated debates "during the negotiations of the convention. In the end, a compromise was found to allow the use of tear gas for the control of riots but to ban it for war.

A political scientist then explained to us that if tear gas was banned on the battlefield, it is partly because soldiers on the ground do not have the ability to easily distinguish whether a gas used is a tear gas or some kind of gas. something more deadly.

The experts also said that there were few immediate alternatives to tear gas to fight the riots and stressed the lack of willingness to change the status quo.