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On American Thanksgiving weekend, United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents gassed children with chemical weapons at the U.S.-Mexico border at San Ysidro, America’s busiest border crossing.

Social and traditional media were awash in of family members fleeing tear gas canisters, pepper spray and flash bang grenades, some running without shoes and in diapers.

The United States has created a backlog at the border by employing a ticketed system of entries and forcing asylum-seekers to . “We’re not turning people away,” CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told reporters in October.

Humanitarian crisis

It is not surprising that the mayor of Tijuana has declared a and is hoping for more financial support to provide to migrants.

Trump, meanwhile, has consistently employed , xenophobic, and fascistic rhetoric when discussing the migrants.

In the leadup to November’s midterm elections, the president referred to asylum-seekers as “” “human shields,” an “insurgency” and “”

This language created a false pretence to deploy to the border, double the number who are stationed in Syria.

The president recently defended the Thanksgiving tear gassing, claiming that three CBP agents had been by rocks and stones thrown by migrants whose “violence is very strong.” However, his account by McAleenan, and the CBP’s , that “the likelihood of violence directed against CBP personnel along the border is minimal.”

California ponders legal action

These horrific tear gas attacks have fuelled , as well as a probe into of lobbing chemical weapons over the border, with the state of California debating .

We should question how and why the Trump administration is creating a that then purports to justify the militarization of the border against . The administration is repelling the asylum-seekers by any means necessary, forcing them to remain in squalid conditions and denying them access to their rights.

Using military language, as Trump does repeatedly as commander-in-chief, fuels widespread perceptions of migrants as “invaders.” The language creates the false impression of danger. The group becomes seen as a threat that must be contained and pushed out.

It results in a show of power to citizens that their government is in charge of the immigration and asylum systems, and that they should trust and feel protected by these tough officials.

This rhetoric reinforces an , leading to that then justify violence to repel foreigners, including women and diapered children.

False associations with disease

There is a long history of falsely foreigners with disease, and this is no exception. that the migrants have “health issues” as falsely that the newcomers will conjure up the long-eradicated smallpox and bring it into the United States.

While it’s certainly a fallacy that diseases respect borders, the use of the border as a “cordon sanitaire” to protect the country is a powerful tool to deploy.

The Trump administration insists on putting forward harmful actions to back up its rhetoric of hate. It’s going to build a ; it will separate from their caregivers, confining them to despite signing an purporting to end the practice; and now attacking men, women and children on the Mexican side of the border with tear gas.

have long been protesting the efforts to scare citizens about this .

It’s time to start listening to these voices, and to react with compassion to asylum-seekers not with violence, hate and militarized language.

 is an adjunct professor and the interim associate director of the Ethics, Society, and Law Program at Trinity College, University of Toronto.

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