SAN DIEGO (AP) – President Donald Trump is strongly defending the U.S. use of tear gas at the Mexico border to repel a crowd of migrants that included angry rock-throwers and barefoot, crying children.
On Tuesday, U.S. authorities lowered the number of arrests during the confrontation to 42 from 69. Rodney Scott, chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, said the initial count included some arrests in Mexico by Mexican authorities who reported 39 arrests.
Scott also defended the agents’ decisions to fire tear gas into Mexico, saying they were being assaulted by “a hail of rocks.”
“That has happened before and, if we are rocked, that would happen again tomorrow,” he told reporters.
Critics denounced the action by border agents as overkill, but Trump kept to a hard line.