CNN reporter Bill Weir was hit with tear gas and forced to cut a CNN broadcast short while reporting from a manic scene at the Mexico-Honduras border.
Reporting via a grainy audio feed to a mostly silent anchor, Ana Cabrera, Weir appeared strained at times seemingly pressing up against the crowds when a tear gas canister exploded mere feet from him, he reported.
“Tear gas. Tear gas. The canister landed literally two feet from me,” he said. “I got to get to safety.”
“No, no, no, no, don’t throw rocks,” he added shortly before fleeing to safety.
“The policemen are forcing the gates back after firing either smoke canisters, I didn’t smell tear gas. But an incredibly frightening scene to be in the middle of this scrum of people,” he said moments before, describing what seemed to be a harrowing scene.
“You can see all the shoes that have been lost in the trample. There’s a man in front of me — suffering from heat stroke, maybe having a heart attack — It’s so hard to tell,” he said.
Weir was down reporting on a large caravan of migrants moving their way up from Honduras with an ultimate destination of the United States. President Trump has already seized on the issue, warning that he would be prepared to deploy the U.S. military to the border to make sure no illegal crossing happen.
Video from CNN showed a chaotic scene with hundreds if not thousands of migrants attempting to stream into Mexico. On Friday, Trump dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Mexico City to attempt to wrangle a political solution before the migrants could reach the U.S. border.