The press is using anything it can as a pretext for pressing President Trump to end his firm stance on rule of law at the U.S. border and allow thousands of caravan migrants from Honduras and elsewhere into the U.S.

Here's the latest "narrative": two migrant teens, around the age of 16 or 17, were murdered, apparently by robbers, while wandering around with a third teen in Tijuana.

The press has called them "unaccompanied children" who were "'teens" staying at the "child shelter."  Journalists write about this as yet another element of the arduous dangers and terrors of "children" crossing over to the U.S. illegally, to specifically criticize the U.S. for asking them to wait at the border as their asylum claims are evaluated.  The Guardian is just one example of such pious narrative-making:

Their deaths highlight not only the treacherous pilgrimage thousands of children and teenagers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala make to the US each year but also the dangers they continue to face even after reaching the border.  Minors often find themselves trapped in cities such as Tijuana as a result of bureaucratic hurdles being erected by US authorities.

There's just one problem with these tears and flapdoodle: the Mexican press tells a different story.  Here's what La Jornada, a big Tijuana paper, via Google Translate, reports really went down:

Tijuana, BC.  Two teenagers, aged 16 and 17 – of Honduran origin, members of the Migrant Caravan died strangled in the northern part of this city, after being hooked by a young woman who offered them sex.

Although they did not carry identification, the bodies were recognized by a third young man who went with them, and who, although injured, they left the barracks where the double homicide occurred because he promised to "go for money and work with them."

The deputy attorney general in Tijuana, Jorge Álvarez, reported that the murder took place in a place they have identified as a riding stables and because of what the surviving victim recounts, those who committed the homicide were "in a state of drug addiction".

They were out there alone, with money or "a check," looking to solicit hookers, and got slaughtered by robbers, who, the Tijuana cops say, were on drugs.  Drug addicts committing crimes against normals?  Yes, it happens.  It's a particularly nasty kind of street crime.  And it's not unique to Tijuana.  It could just as easily happen in San Diego or San Pedro Sula, where the teens hailed from.  Anyone engaging in dangerous behavior, such as soliciting street hookers, is quite likely to be a victim.  The cops also said the robbers didn't know that their victims were caravan migrants.  Being thugs, their aim was money.

And not a word about the hooker part from the Guardian or any of the mainstream press.

The real issues are why these caravan migrants had money to entice robbers, since caravan migrants are so indigent, according to the press and its activists, and more important, why the "child" shelter let them out unaccompanied to solicit hookers.  Perhaps the teens lied about their intentions, but any experienced shelter whose job is to protect kids would have known that teens are quite capable of that and escorted them to cash their checks or whatever it was they said they would want to do to ensure they didn't make it a night on the town.  What's more, the shelter people had to have known that Tijuana can be a dangerous city, given that it's very big (bigger than San Diego, actually), and big cities can be dangerous places.  I know that Tijuaneros know that, because I have visited Tijuana many times, and any time it was an official event, Tijuana officials have insisted that I, as a single female, walk around escorted.  The Tijuana people just don't want trouble.  Seems the child shelter, which was run by a leftist NGO called "Coalicion Pro Defensa del Migrante," didn't necessarily have the same standards, although to be fair, we don't know yet what the circumstances were.  What we do know is that caravan migrants have more money than the press is reporting, and some of these vaunted and supposedly vulnerable teens are using it to solicit hookers, which can't be making them popular in Tijuana, given the blight such activity supports.

Yes, it's a shame the migrants were killed.  Nobody should be killed by drug-addicted thugs while soliciting prostitutes.

But it's the sort of thing that could happen anywhere, and it's the result children being allowed out with no supervision or parental involvement, and quite possibly being raised with no values.  There also could be gang ties, given that the teens would even think of looking for hookers as an ordinary activity.  Do you know any teens who would do that?

The only question it raises for the U.S. is one of vetting.  Should the U.S. really be importing these kinds of people (prostitution and soliciting hookers remains illegal in most of the U.S.) over others who can be productive and law-abiding?  The whole situation is a crime situation, not a migration situation.  They were killed not because they were migrants, but because they had money.  It's not an argument to allow every caravan migrant in and open wide the U.S. borders.  Nice try, mainstream media, but we can read the Mexican press.

Image credit: Tucker Carlson, Fox News via YouTube screen grab.