Use of 'rescues' by Mexican migration officials criticized

25/1/2020 10:33

        The headline on a statement from Mexico’s National Immigration Institute read: “INM rescues 800 Central American migrants who entered (Mexico) today irregularly.”
        
        For many people who watched the moments when hundreds of Mexican national guardsmen with helmets and riot shields confronted hundreds of migrants who had been resting in the shade after walking all morning, “rescues” didn’t seem to be the right word.
        
        Defenders of migrants' rights say rescues typically don’t involve spraying those being rescued with pepper spray. Those requiring rescue usually don’t run away from their rescuers.
        
        But such euphemisms have become the language of immigration policy and not just in Mexico. The same terminology has been employed in Europe for immigrants crossing the Mediterranean, though sometimes those migrants are in unseaworthy vessels in need of assistance.