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A migrant girl from Honduras, part of a caravan of thousands of people from Central America, cries after fleeing tear gas from US border agents. (REUTERS / Kim Kyung-Hoon)
A little Honduran girl looks at the camera, her young features deformed by anguish. She is barefoot, dusty and only dressed in a coat and a t-shirt. And she has just escaped from the clouds of stifling tear gas fired across the border by US agents.
A second photo, which has also been widely and quickly circulated on social media, shows an anguished woman frantically trying to shoot the same child and a second child away from the gas as it spreads.
The three were part of a much larger group, perhaps including 70 or 80 people, including men, women and children, represented in a larger-angle image fleeing tear gas. Reuters photographer Kim Kyung-Hoon filmed the photos, which provoked outrage and seemed to contradict President Trump's portrayal of the caravan's migrants as "criminals" and "gang members".
Trump officials said the authorities must react forcefully after hundreds of migrants rushed to the border near Tijuana on Sunday, some of them throwing "shots" at the customs and security personnel. border protection.
But Democratic leaders, human rights defenders and others have focused on the image of the two children in particular, expressing their outrage online at the action. Many have pointed out that gas attacks caused by gas attacks were proof that Trump's campaign against a caravan of asylum seekers from Central America had gone too far.
"Shooting tear gas on children is not what we are as Americans," said Tom Perez. chairman of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted. "Asking for asylum is not a crime. We must be better than that. "
California's elected Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, argued that images of children running tear gas go against American ideals.
"These children are barefoot. In the layers. Suffocating with tear gas, he tweeted. "Women and children who have left their lives – in search of peace and asylum – have been confronted with violence and fear. It's not my America. We are a land of refuge. D & # 39; hope. Of freedom. And we will not tolerate that. "
Others, such as the new Democratic Representative of Alexandria, Ocasio-Cortez, from New York, pointed out that families on the border were escaping the conditions of violence in Central America and that they had the right to ask for asylum.
Chaos erupted around San Ysidro's bustling border post on Sunday, which Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said was "closed" to ensure public safety against the large numbers of migrants seeking to enter. illegally in the United States ".
Contrary to the relatively bipartisan criticism of Trump's now-abandoned method of separating families, to deter migrants, the initial indignation provoked by tear gas on children seemed to come mainly from Democrats and the president's critics.
Some, on the right, felt that if migrants could avoid being gassed by not throwing projectiles or attempting to cross the border "illegally".
In fact, it is not illegal to approach the border to seek asylum. And if the group had gone to the border and presented themselves as an asylum seeker, the federal law would have required US officials to review their claim before sending it back to Mexico. Indeed, they are required to do so, whether migrants are crossing at a designated entry point or elsewhere.
US District Judge Jon S. Tigar forcibly recalled the law to Trump last Monday, when he issued a nationwide restraining order against the president's plan to consider asylum claims. only migrants who crossed legal checkpoints. It was Tigar's decision that pushed Trump to attack last week's "Judge Obama" and the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which in turn provoked a reprimand from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Trump's legal options seem limited. "The border is very long," Peter S. Marguiles, an expert in immigration law at the Roger Williams University Law School, told The Post on Monday night. But if the administration can "stop people just before the border, it is easier to argue that these people are not entitled to asylum. I think it would be a terrible and morally repugnant policy, "he said," but the administration would be on better legal grounds. "
Attempting to stop them near the border is exactly what Trump could plan.
Joshua Partlow and Nick Miroff of the post, quoting Mexican officials and prominent members of the transition team of President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said that the administration was working with Mexico's new government to a plan that would force asylum seekers to wait in this country. while their claims have been brought to US courts.
While Trump alluded to such a possibility in a tweet On Saturday, he offered no details. He could try to invoke an exception to the law called "safe third country", which allows the government to keep asylum seekers in another country, in this case Mexico, under the law. A bilateral agreement while their claims are being examined in the United States.
This provision has several disadvantages, however, said the ACLU's immigration lawyer, Lee Gelernt, at The Post newspaper on Sunday night. If and when an agreement is drawn up, "it must be assured that the people waiting on the Mexican side are safe, not just the Mexican government, but gangs" and others. . . We think it would be impossible for the United States "to give this assurance, he added.
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