Agents fire tear gas at migrants seeking to breach US-Mexico border

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US agents have fired tear gas at Central American migrants, after some tried to breach the busiest border separating Mexico and the United States.

Officers from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fired or threw the gas after a handful of migrants sought to open a small hole in concertina wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee. Images showed the migrants – men, women and children – running from the smoke. For a time, they also suspended all crossings at the world's busiest land border.

Honduran migrant Ana Zuniga, 23, told the Associated Press it was at that point she saw the US agents fire the tear gas, which enveloped some of the migrants. “We ran, but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more,” she told the AP, while cradling her three-year-old daughter Valery in her arms.

Earlier, the CBC said all crossings at the busiest port of entry on the US-Mexico border have been suspended, after hundreds of Central American migrants pushed past a blockade of Mexican police. Later, it reopened the facility for pedestrian crossings.

Television footage showed hundreds of migrants storming towards the US border after pushing their way past the officers. There were no reports of anyone being hurt, or of any of the migrants committing violence.

The agency said both vehicle and foot crossings had been suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry hundreds of migrants gathered at the busy crossing point, seeking to apply for asylum in the US.

“Southbound lanes into Mexico at the San Ysidro port of entry are currently closed. Updates will be provided,” the CBC’s San Diego office said on Twitter at around noon local time. It subsequently tweeted to say northbound vehicles, along with all foot crossings, had also been halted.

The move came after Donald Trump suggested over the weekend that Mexico had agreed a deal to allow asylum-seekers to wait in the country while their claims move through US immigration courts. The Washington Post had quoted Mexico’s incoming interior minister Olga Sanchez to say president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed to allow migrants to stay in Mexico as a “short-term solution”.

Hours later, the newspaper said she had denied any deal had been done, saying: “There is no agreement of any sort between the incoming Mexican government and the US government.”

Earlier on Sunday, hundreds of Central American migrants, most of the them countries such as Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala raced towards the US border, making their way around or through a blockade of Mexican police officers.

The Associated Press said around 5,000 migrants have been camped in and around a sports complex in Tijuana after making their way through Mexico in recent weeks in a series of caravans. Many hope to apply for asylum in the US, but agents at the San Ysidro entry point are processing fewer than 100 asylum petitions a day.

Some of the migrants who went forward Sunday called on each other to remain peaceful. They appeared to easily pass through the Mexican police blockade without using violence, the AP said.

A second line of Mexican police carrying plastic riot shields stood guard outside a Mexican customs and immigration plaza, where the migrants were headed.

That line of police installed tall steel panels behind them outside the Chaparral crossing on the Mexican side of the border, which completely blocked incoming traffic lanes to Mexico.

In recent weeks, Mr Trump has seized on the issue of the migrant as he sought to rally Republicans ahead of the midterms, terming their massing an “invasion” and dispatching thousands of troops to the border. They spent their days laying down rolls of razor wire in a visual display of actions, Democrats and migrants rights activists have dismissed as a political stunt.

Irineo Mujica, who has accompanied the migrants for weeks as part of the aid group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, said the aim of Sunday’s march towards the US border was to make the migrants’ plight more visible to the governments of Mexico and the US “We can’t have all these people here,” said Mr Mujica.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum on Friday declared a humanitarian crisis in his border city of 1.6m, which he he said was struggling to accommodate the crush of migrants.