Forty-two caravan migrants broke into the United and were arrested on Sunday, while organizers pushed women and children to the front of the melee, a top border patrol agent told CNN.

“Forty-two [caravan migrants] crossed the border and were arrested … there were numerous people that actually made it across the border,” said Rodney Scott, Chief Patrol Agent for the San Diego Sector of the border.

The caravan’s organizers also pushed women and children to the front of the clash, Scott said November 26:

What I find unconscionable is that people would take children intentionally into this situation. What we saw over and over yesterday was that the group, the caravan as we call them, would push women and children toward the front and then begin, basically, rocking our agents.

Scott said his agent did not aim the tear gas at the women and children who climbed up towards the wall, saying:

We try specifically to target the instigators, the person assaulting the agent. But as you saw, once that chemical is released, it does go through the air … I inhaled quite a bit of it yesterday.

Scott continued:

We are in the process of building the new border wall here, but we don’t have it completed. There were some sections that had the dilapidated border wall that was made out of scrap metal the military gave us. The group breached a couple sections of that, actually tore down one small section, started to rush across. And that’s another time that they started assaulting our agents. We were able to hold them back using riot-type, riot techniques. But there were, ultimately 42 arrests of individuals. And again, as I mentioned, the vast majority of those were adult males.

“The vast majority [of people in the caravan]… are economic migrants,” he said, adding, “if they were truly asylum seekers they would have walked up with their hands up and surrendered.”