Yahoo News Donald Trump defends use of tear gas on migrant children - and blames their parents
Donald Trump has defended the use of tear gas at the US-Mexican border to repel migrants, blaming the parents of the children caught up in it.
The action of US border agents has sparked widespread criticism, but the US president maintained it was necessary.
At a roundtable meeting in Mississippi on Monday, he said: “Why is a parent running up into an area where they know the tear gas is forming and it’s going to be formed and they were running up with a child?”
Mr Trump said US border agents had resorted to tear gas because they were: “being rushed by some very tough people”, adding: “Here’s the bottom line: Nobody is coming into our country unless they come in legally.”
Mr Trump said it was “a very minor form of the tear gas itself” that he assured was “very safe”.
The American president also claimed that some of the women are not really parents but are “grabbers” who steal children to give themselves a better chance of getting asylum in the US.
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The huge caravan of migrants from Central America is stuck on the Mexican side of the San Diego-Tijuana border.
Officials have said some 500 members are criminals and on Monday, Mr Trump branded them “stone cold criminals”.
Mexico should move the flag waving Migrants, many of whom are stone cold criminals, back to their countries. Do it by plane, do it by bus, do it anyway you want, but they are NOT coming into the U.S.A. We will close the Border permanently if need be. Congress, fund the WALL!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2018
Mario Figueroa, Tijuana’s social services department director who is overseeing operations at the sports complex where most of the migrants in the caravan are staying, said as of Friday that of the 4,938 staying there, 933 were women, 889 were children and 3,105 were men, which includes fathers travelling with families along with single men.
