The images from the border laid bare the barbarity this country employs to deal with poor, helpless people. They also displayed the callousness and cruelty of the right-wing press, which largely wrote off the tear-gas attacks. And the incident highlighted one Florida company that's making a pretty penny from the disaster: Defense Technology, a weapons and police-supply company owned by the Jacksonville-based company Safariland.
Safariland's products were also infamously used on American protesters during the 2015 Ferguson, Missouri, riots and the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. (One Standing Rock protester sued Defense Technology after she says one of the company's flashbang grenades nearly blew off her hand.)
Multiple reporters have posted images and video of Defense Technology canisters unleashed upon the caravan. In a now-infamous Reuters photograph, immigrant Maria Mesa was captured tearing her children away from what appears to be a cloud of tear gas fired by American border agents. Mesa later showed an NBC News reporter a canister she picked up from the scene — the photo shows a Defense Technology "Riot Control" can full of
Tear gas has been linked to permanent respiratory damage in children and miscarriages in pregnant women. Doctors have repeatedly challenged its status as a "nonlethal" weapon. Trump's defenders have pointed out that the Barack Obama administration also used tear gas at the U.S. border — but that doesn't excuse either administration.
ActivistThis is the Mom in that photo. Her name is Maria Mesa and she says she was scared for her life and the life of her children yesterday. Holding the tear gas canister, she said seeing the photo of her from yesterday makes her want to cry “I just grabbed my kids and ran” pic.twitter.com/0crStFaasT
— Annie Rose Ramos (@Annie_Rose23) November 26, 2018
The video also shows a Safariland CS-gas can, as well as a Safariland "Triple-Chaser," a separating canister that also dispenses tear gas. A different canister dispenses oleoresin capsicum (OC), also known as pepper spray.
An independent photographer on the scene posted similar images.
Representatives for Safariland did not immediately respond to messages from New Times yesterday. An investor named Warren B. Kanders has run the company in multiple stints: In 1996, Kanders and business partner Robert Schiller founded a firm called Armor Holdings, which owned Safariland until 2007. Kanders then bought Safariland himself in 2012. Kanders is a trustee at New York City's Whitney Museum. Safariland has also reportedly paid more than $40 million in settlements to the U.S. Department of Justice for "alleged criminal activity connected to the sale of defective bulletproof vests," according to the International Business Times. In 2011 (before Kanders bought the company), Safariland admitted to prosecutors that the company had bribed a United Nations officer for inside information as part of a plan to underbid competitors for contracts.
Other reporters this week have noted that Kanders is a major political donor both to Republicans and a few Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker. Booker this week condemned the tear-gas attacks without mentioning that he's taken campaign contributions from the tear-gas manufacturer.
The company is also connected with Florida politics. Armor Holdings, the former Safariland parent company that Kanders cofounded and previously ran as CEO, donated $40,000 to the Florida Republican Party in 2004, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
The Young Turks, a "news and talk network" aimed at millennials, yesterday unearthed a new, $526,799 federal contract Safariland inked with Customs and Border Protection last September. The company's slogan is "We save lives."
