New investigation details tear gas usage on children during immigration raids
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Videos and interviews compiled by the nonprofit investigative journalism group ProPublica count at least 79 children nationally, including 10 from Minnesota, who were harmed by tear gas during immigration crackdowns since President Donald Trump took office.
In a video from Minneapolis that tops the report, smoke billows from under a vehicle where immigration agents fired a canister of chemical irritants to disperse nearby protestors. Children rush through the haze, coughing.
ProPublica reporter Maya Miller said there aren’t uniform standards from the federal government for use of tear gas and pepper spray. In many cases, The Department of Homeland Security’s standards are weaker than state standards. That was the case in Minneapolis.
“These weapons were designed to incapacitate adult men and to be used in wartime,” Miller said. “The closest study that we found that approximates the potential impacts for children long term is actually a survey that was done of Palestinian refugees who were hit by tear gas repeatedly by Israeli security forces.”
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Children or adults don’t need to be near the dispersed irritant to experience their harmful effects and tear gas can penetrate the walls of homes blocks away from where it was originally fired, she added.
Miller described the health problems of a Chicago-area child who was 6 years old at the time tear gas was fired in her neighborhood.
“Over the course of a few weeks, tear gas repeatedly seeped into their home, and since then this girl's mother, she's now seven, has had to take her to urgent care five times because she's had trouble breathing,” Miller noted.
DHS justified the usage of these irritants against what they called “agitators” and said parents “irresponsibly” brought their children into dangerous situations, Miller said.
Listen to the radio interview by clicking the player above. Find ProPublica’s investigation here.
