A staged photo of a mother running with two young children in diapers, fleeing a canister belching tear gas, is being used by the mainstream media to characterize President Donald Trump’s insistence on protecting the U.S. border as cruel. Several Democrat lawmakers have even absurdly suggested that the U.S. Border Patrol’s use of tear gas constituted a violation of international law regarding chemical weapons. Democrats can only fault enforcement our nation’s laws, rather than find fault with foreign-flag-waving migrant rioters actively engaged in violently breaching our southern border.

What about the women and children caught in the fray? Demonstrating her abject ignorance, incoming Demo Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the “new face of the Democrat Party,” compared these border rioters to Jewish families trying to escape Hitler and the Holocaust. As Sen. Lindsey Graham rightly suggested, Cortez should take a tour of the Holocaust Museum when she gets to Washington.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen set the record straight, stating, “It appears in some cases that the limited number of women and children in the caravan are being used by the organizers as ‘human shields’ when they confront law enforcement. They are being put at risk by the caravan organizers as we saw at the Mexico-Guatemala border. This is putting vulnerable people in harm’s way.” Exactly. As Philip Wegmann of the Washington Examiner bluntly put it, “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.”

San Diego Border Patrol Chief Agent Rodney Scott had this assessment about migrants using children as human shields in the riot: “Similar to what we saw with the first wave of the caravan that came up about a week or so, a group immediately started throwing rocks and debris at our agents. … Once our agents were assaulted … they deployed tear gas to protect themselves and to protect the border. … What I find unconscionable is that people would intentionally take children into this situation. The caravan would push women and children toward the front and then begin rocking our agents. We tried to target the instigators, specifically those assaulting the agents.”

Nielsen also pointed out that the use of tear gas to disperse a mob has been regularly used at the border. “The accepted use of nonlethal force (also used by the Obama Administration in 2013) prevented further injury to agents and a mass illegal rush across the border,” she said. As we noted yesterday, under the Obama administration U.S. Border Patrol agents were authorized to employ the same nonlethal mob-dispersing tactics, including the use of both tear gas and pepper spray. In fact, at times during Obama’s tenure, the Border Patrol used tear gas and pepper spray monthly. Where was the Democrat and media outrage then?

As they did with the photos of kids in cages, Democrats and their media cohorts are appealing to emotion over reason as they intentionally conflate and confuse legal and illegal immigration and asylum. The Leftmedia willfully misinforms the American public as it seeks to promote the acceptance of a globalist, anti-American agenda that is dead set on eroding national boundaries. Never mind the fact that the vast majority of the migrants who violently rushed the border Sunday were in fact young men. The images of helpless migrant children caught in the fray are designed to prey on the emotive instincts of the Democrat Party’s largest voting block: women.

Fact is, the current border fiasco is totally on Democrats for their opposition to border security and enforcement – in effect advertising to migrants that they will gain entry.

And a footnote: Notably, a majority of Mexicans have an unfavorable view of the migrants who have invaded their nation.

(Updated.)