US Politicians Criticize Use of Tear Gas against Migrants

Democrat politicians and civil rights activists on Monday criticized the use of tear gas against Central American migrants who tried to cross the US south border.

Officials from the Donald Trump administration said that authorities should respond that way because people who traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, approached the division line on Sunday and threw stones at the Customs and Border Protection staff.

But members of the blue party called the attention on the event that there were children and mothers in the group, an image that difers from what showed the Republican leader, who only referred to the presence of criminals in the migrants caravan who were seeking asylum in the US.

Ordering to throw tear gas at children is not what we are as US citizens. Seeking asylum is not a crime. We must be better than that, wrote the president of the Democrat National Committee, Tom Perez, on his Twitter account.

Gavim Newsom, the governor-elect of California, said that the images of children running away from the tear gas are against the ideals of US citizens.

Women and children who left their lives behind, seeking peace and asylum, found violence and fear. That is not my United States. We are a land of refuge. Of Hope. Of freedom, We are not going to bear that, he expressed on the same platform.

According to the Post, some right-wing figures said that migrants could have avoided that response by not throwing things at the agents or not trying to cross the border illegally.