Tear gas irritates the eyes and the nose on contact. The accompanying smoke can burn the mouth, the throat, and the lungs like fire. Breathing becomes difficult within 30 seconds of contact. Vomiting follows if exposure is longer. Anyone inhaling the gas generally gets away as quickly as possible.

Exposure can be treated with a cold shower, a change of clothes, and milk flushed in the eyes.

It can be prevented altogether by avoiding the kind of mobs that need to be put down with standard chemical crowd deterrents. Don’t want to be gassed? Don’t riot. Don’t want your children to be gassed? Don’t bring them to the kind of protests susceptible to rioting.

The Central American migrants who stormed the border over the weekend didn’t bother with that precaution. Hundreds rushed a border fence near the Mexican city of Tijuana and when some threw rocks and bottles at U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, tear gas was fired to disperse the crowd. A photographer captured a heartbreaking image of two little girls running in diapers and with their mothers as a canister belches the toxic smoke in the background.

The horror sparked outrage over the weekend, most of it overblown.

Unaware of the difference, newly-elected New York Rep. 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 aggravates the mucous membranes.



Asking to be considered a refugee & applying for status isn’t a crime.



It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany.

It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rwanda.

It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria.

And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America. https://t.co/qhv7Rr1itn — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 25, 2018



Equally uninformed, Sen. Brian Schatz wondered in a now-deleted tweet whether the use of tear gas was “consistent with the Conventions on Chemical Weapons?” This was a stupid question from the senior senator from Hawaii. Tear gas can be found in the armories of law enforcement agencies across the world. And pepper spray was routinely used at the border during the previous administration. But apparently non-lethal means of riot control constitute a violation of international law when a Republican is in the White House.

All of this outrage misses the point. Blame doesn’t belong with Border Patrol. They weren’t confronting a mob of toddlers. They were face-to-face with hundreds of adult migrants who chose to start chucking rocks. Officers responded with appropriate nonlethal force. The fact that children were caught in the crossfire isn’t a crime, unless the crime is child neglect or bad parenting by those who brought them to the scene.

Anyone seeking asylum can apply for it at a port of entry. But these migrants chose not to do that. They rushed a barbed-wire fence in an attempt not only to break U.S. law, but to challenge the legitimacy of the government that enacted it. The mothers who brought their kids with them endangered their own children.

The presence of children wasn’t a coincidence, by the way. As the Washington Post reports, parents and smugglers are in the habit of using kids. For many years, their chances of entering the U.S. illegally and avoiding deportation were better if a toddler came along for the journey. Coyotes don’t have to guide migrants through a dangerous desert. So long as they have a kid with them, they could simply be delivered to U.S. immigration authorities. Smugglers even offered a discount if kids are part of the cargo. This is how the policy of taking in family units has generated an entirely new type of child abuse.

To be certain, the Border Patrol should take precautions and use force, including nonlethal force such as tear gas or pepper spray, as a last resort. And precautions should be taken against negligent parenting if possible. But law enforcement shouldn’t be demonized for doing their job, and Ocasio-Cortez should apologize for baselessly comparing them to Nazis.

And as a general rule, the best way to avoid this situation is for parents to leave children behind before heading off to riot.