Tijuana, Mexico – In the photograph, a woman clutches two children in diapers, one of them barefoot, as they run from a smoking tear gas canister fired by U.S. border officials.
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That arresting image, taken in Tijuana, Mexico, by photojournalist Kim Kyung-Hoon of Reuters, spread rapidly online. It prompted outrage after a peaceful march by Central American migrants in Mexico veered out of control Sunday, as hundreds of people tried to evade a Mexican police blockade and ran toward a border crossing into San Diego.
In response to the chaos, which the Homeland Security secretary said included some migrants throwing projectiles at Customs and Border workers, U.S. border officials temporarily shut down the crossing in both directions and fired tear gas to push back migrants from the border fence.
The photo drew anger from many over President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, harsh tactics and uncompromising policies. It also made its way onto the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New York Post and other publications.
In the shot, taken on Sunday, you can see Honduran mother Maria Meza, 35, grabbing the thin arms of her two 5-year-old twin daughters Cheili and Saira as they frantically run from a tear gas canister spewing fumes.
Cheili is seen in diapers, Saira barefoot, while their mother wears a t-shirt showing the smiling sisters from the Disney hit “Frozen,” a movie I’ve seen many times with my own daughter.
Mesa’s 13-year-old daughter, Jamie, is behind her mother in the photo, also running away from the approaching gas.
In the frantic moments after the canisters hit the ground, the acrid smell was everywhere said Kim, I could see children crying, their eyes stung by the gas.
“I thought I was going to die with them because of the gas,” Meza told Reuters colleagues a day later, adding that she was shocked U.S. border agents would fire the canisters near women and children.
The U.S. government said the customs officers had fired off the canisters after a group of migrants had attempted to cross the border violently, throwing projectiles at them.
To some of those expressing outrage, the photograph offered evidence of what they say is the Trump administration’s draconian approach to immigration, including his response to a caravan of migrants, whom Trump has vilified without evidence, as well as immigrants and refugees fleeing violence in their homelands. Several Democratic lawmakers decried the use of tear gas on vulnerable people.
“Federal agents’ use of tear gas on innocent civilians, many of them children, at our southern border is a shocking and heavy-handed use of force that we must condemn and heavily scrutinize,” Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado said on Twitter.
“Throwing tear gas at asylum-seekers — many of whom are women and children — is a new low,” said Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin.
“These children are barefoot. In diapers. Choking on tear gas,” California Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom tweeted. “Women and children who left their lives behind — seeking peace and asylum — were met with violence and fear. That’s not my America.”
Tear gas can cause burning in the eyes, nose and mouth, as well as on the skin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can also cause shortness of breath and a choking sensation. A large enough dose in a confined space can cause blindness and chemical burns, while studies suggest that tear gas has the potential to cause serious harm to vulnerable populations, including children.
Kim said he was dispatched by Reuters to Mexico almost two weeks ago to cover the caravan. There, Kim found subjects in the caravan to follow and traveled with them to the U.S. border.
President Donald Trump, was strongly defending the U.S. use of tear gas at the Mexican border.
Critics denounced the border agents’ action as overkill, but Trump kept to a hard line.
“They were being rushed by some very tough people and they used tear gas,” Trump said Monday of the previous day’s encounter. “Here’s the bottom line: Nobody is coming into our country unless they come in legally.”
At a roundtable in Mississippi later Monday, Trump seemed to acknowledge that children were affected, asking, “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?”
He said it was “a very minor form of the tear gas itself” that he assured was “very safe.”
Without offering evidence, he also claimed that some of the women are not really parents but are instead “grabbers” who steal children so they have a better chance of being granted asylum in the U.S.
Meza’s family had made it to the El Chapparal border crossing, which straddles the Mexican city of Tijuana and San Diego on the U.S. side, after leaving their home in the violent city of San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras two months ago.
Sunday’s incident happened after a group of migrants in Tijuana rushed at the border fencing.
Just before the tear gas was fired, I had followed some of the migrants as they approached a section of the border fence recently reinforced with razor-studded coils. U.S. border agents warily eyed the group from the other side.
Meza and her children said they had already spent a week at a Tijuana shelter, but they will likely have to wait much longer for a chance to ultimately plead their case.
She said she hopes to be granted asylum in the United States due to rampant crime back home, and if successful will travel to Louisiana, where the girls’ father lives.
Tell them to go home and come here legally! Like millions of people do!
5 years old and in diapers????? she is going straight on welfare sec 8 special ed etc etc she doesnt look like she was starved or in danger she is here only for benefits also she should be arrested for child endangerment!!!!!!
The same so-called “photo-journalists” did the exact same thing during the first Intifada, when they showed Israeli soldiers beating rock throwers. In this case, in spite of the tear gas, the response was much more subdued.
Any moral person should feel anguish over the suffering of women and children. Klal Yisrael is a nation of rachmanim. We should not be indifferent to those that suffer and want to seek asylum. Of course it should be done legaly but our attitude must be one of care and concern not hate and vitriol. It is sad and disheartning to see comments of many of our community that parrot the hate and vitriol of Trump and his ilk.
In the first picture you can actually see in the backround that people are posung for these pictures! You can tell it’s fake. Why else is nobody else running?!?
This picture pierces the heart, if it doesn’t yours, please check if you are Jewish… and to # 2 the child is wearing diapers because of the long walk , so they don’t need to stop all the time, and mabey she is sick, which makes their dire situation all that more heart wrenching.
Much like Hamas who use children as human shileds & then the world crues out & blames Israel when thes kids are caught in the cross fire.
Do you bleeding hear liberals honestly believe that because a woman is abusing her children by trying to cross into a country illegally that the border latrol guys should just step back & allow her to do so??..Perhaps that will encourage other ‘mothers’ to do the same & endanger more children in the process.
SHE is the ONLY one guilty of endangering those kids!
Notice there are no other kids in the picture anywhere. This was posed.
I don’t feel bad for a single solitary second whatsoever!
These people are the useful idiots of the left. They allowed themselves to be snookered into thinking they could just sneak in to the USA and be bestowed with socialist liberal dummycrat benefits.
Besides, we already know for 100% certain, that THIS PICTURE WAS STAGED!! FakeNews Reuters was caught and it is glorious!
NPR reported the following: The tear gas was fired at adult males attempting to breach the fence and who were throwing rocks. However, it was a fairly windy day and some of the tear gas was blown to the area where families with children were gathered.” NPR’s editorial stance may be somewhat left of center but, by and large, their reportage has been refreshingly objective.