You do not want your children to have tear gas? Leave them at home when you are rioting

TEar gas irritates the eyes and nose on contact. The accompanying smoke can burn the mouth, throat and lungs like a fire. Breathing becomes difficult within 30 seconds after contact. Vomiting follows if the exposure is longer. Anyone who inhales the gas usually escapes as quickly as possible.

The exposure can be treated with a cold shower, change of clothes and milk rinsed to the eyes.

To avoid this problem, simply avoid the type of crowds that must be repressed with a conventional chemical deterrent. You do not want to be gassed? Do not riot. You do not want your kids to be gassed? Do not bring them to the kind of demonstrations that could provoke riots.

Central American migrants who invaded the border over the weekend did not bother to take this precaution. Hundreds of people rushed to a fence near the Mexican city of Tijuana and, when some people threw stones and bottles at US border and customs officials, tear gas was fired to disperse the crowd. A photographer captured the heartbreaking image of two little girls running in diapers and with their mother while a canister spits toxic smoke in the background.

The horror provoked indignation over the weekend, largely exaggerated.

Ignoring the difference, newly elected New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez compared the use of tear gas at the border to the use of lethal gas in the Holocaust. One killed six million Jews, the other temporarily worsens the mucous membranes.

Just as misinformed, Senator Brian Schatz asked in a tweet now deleted if the use of tear gas was "in accordance with the chemical weapons conventions?". It was a stupid question from the senior senator from Hawaii. Tear gas is found in the arms depots of law enforcement agencies around the world. And the pepper spray was commonly used at the border during the previous administration. But the seemingly non-lethal means of riot control is a violation of international law when a Republican is in the White House.

All this indignation misses the point. The fault does not belong to Border Patrol. They did not face a crowd of toddlers. They were facing hundreds of adult migrants who chose to start picking stones. Officers responded with the appropriate non-lethal force. The fact that children have been caught in the crossfire is not a crime unless it is a crime of negligence or misconduct on the part of those who brought them to the scene.

Anyone requesting asylum can apply at an entry point. But these migrants chose not to do it. They rushed to a barbed wire fence to try not only to violate US law, but to challenge the legitimacy of the government that promulgated it. The mothers who brought their children with them endangered their own children.

The presence of children was not a coincidence. As the Washington Post reports, parents and smugglers usually use children. For many years, their chances of illegally entering the United States and avoiding deportation were better if a toddler showed up for the trip. Coyotes do not have to guide migrants in a dangerous desert. As long as they have a child with them, they could simply be handed over to the US immigration authorities. The smugglers even offered a discount if children were part of the cargo. Thus the policy of care of family units has generated a whole new type of abuse.

To be certain, the border patrol should take precautions and use force, including a non-lethal force such as tear gas or pepper spray, as a last resort. And precautions should be taken against careless parents, if possible. But the police should not be demonized for doing their job and Ocasio-Cortez should apologize for their unfounded comparison with the Nazis.

And as a general rule, the best way to avoid this situation is for parents to leave their children before rioting.