Migrant caravan: Mexico calls for 'full investigation' into use of tear gas as Trump defends action
Almost 100 Central American migrants have been deported
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Your support makes all the difference.A day after the US shutdown a port of entry on its southwestern border and shot tear gas and pepper spray into crowds of migrants to stop them from crossing illegally, Donald Trump has said Mexico should deport them back to their home countries.
Many of the approximately 5,000 migrants camped out in Tijuana, Mexico, are attempting to enter the US through the San Ysidro port near San Diego, California, in order to apply for asylum. US border agents are approving approximately 100 applications per day but tensions over the slow pace came to a head over the weekend.
Mr Trump - who also defended the use of tear gas - tweeted: "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!"
Later, Mexico's foreign ministry presented a diplomatic note to the US government calling for "a full investigation" into what it described as non-lethal weapons directed towards Mexican territory on Sunday, a statement from the ministry said.
The decision on Sunday to use tear gas among crowds that contained a large number of women and children, was condemned by high-profile Democrats. Beto O’Rourke, who narrowly failed in his bid for a senate seat in Texas, said it should “tell us something about her home country that a mother is willing to travel 2,000 miles with her four-month old son to come here”.
“Should tell us something about our country that we only respond to this desperate need once she is at our border,” he wrote online. “So far, in this administration, that response has included taking kids from their parents, locking them up in cages, and now tear gassing them at the border.”
New York congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likened the Central American migrants to Jewish families fleeing Nazi Germany, declaring that applying for refugee status should not be considered a crime. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom, recently elected as governor of California, from where the CBP agents fired the tear gas, tweeted a widely shared Reuters photograph of a woman with two young children running from a gas canister.
“These children are barefoot. In diapers. Choking on tear gas,” Mr Newsom wrote. “Women and children who left their lives behind - seeking peace and asylum - were met with violence and fear. That’s not my America. We’re a land of refuge. Of hope. Of freedom. And we will not stand for this."
If you want to see how developments unfolded read below
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In that interview, Mr Scott said migrants had thrown rocks at CBP agents and defended the decision to use tear gas, saying: 'What I saw on the border yesterday was not people walking up to border control agents and asking to seek asylum.'
Donald Trump has also defended the use of tear gas. "They had to use, because they were being rushed by some very tough people."
While Defence Secretary James Mattis did not address the migrant caravan in comments about the US military's challenges in the western hemisphere, Navy Admiral Kurt Tidd said the caravan is an example of one.
"We have to be more attentive to the threats in this hemisphere. What affects one, affects all," Mr Tidd said, adding that lawlessness and high crime in some countries "are the drivers of migration from Central America."
Last week, Mr Trump had threatened to close the whole border with Mexico should the migrant caravan become "uncontrollable" even with nearly 6,000 US troops and additional border agents at the ready.
Mr Trump said closing the border would also affect trade with Mexico, specifically vehicle sales. His comment came just weeks after the USMCA was signed, a trade deal between the US, Mexico, and Canada which replaces the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).
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Approximately 300 US troops stationed at the border in Texas and Arizona have now been given a new assignment in California, specifically around the San Ysidro port of entry near San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico.
The move comes after US Customs and Border Protection asked the Pentagon for help to stop illegal immigration.
According to the US military 2,400 troops are in Texas, 1,400 are in Arizona and 1,800 are currently in California.
Mr Trump has also defended the use of tear gas and pepper spray on the San Ysidro migrants.
On his way to Mississippi for a political rally, the president said US border agents "were being rushed by some very tough people and they used tear gas".
He then brought up his predecessor Barack Obama again. The Trump administration faced near-global scorn for the family separation policy to jail parents and guardians upon illegal entry into the US separately from approximately 2,300 children, who were kept in tent cities and moved as far away as Chicago and New York.
Mr Trump, who had said the policy was intended to stop human trafficking, ended the policy in June but said today: "Obama had a separation policy but people don't like to talk about it".
The previous administration detained families together, but often released them as they awaited asylum hearings in immigration court.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham responded to Democratic Congresswoman-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's comparison of the migrant crisis with the Holocaust.
He said she should "take a tour of the Holocaust Museum" in Washington, DC, which documents the Second World War genocide of Jews all over Europe.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez previously travelled to the Texas-Mexico border in order to advocate for the reunification of families separated as they attempted to migrate to the US.
Some of those at the border believe the violent clashes will undermine those who will ask for asylum.
Isauro Mejia, 46, from Cortes, Honduras, said that before the tear gas, he had hoped to be able to press an asylum claim, but now he was not so sure.
"The way things went yesterday ... I think there is no chance," Mr Mejia told the Associated Press. "With the difficulty that has presented itself because of yesterday's incidents ... that's further away."
Conservative commentator Geraldo Rivera was one of those on the right to admonish the images of the use of tear gas:
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