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DHS Launches Massive “Less Lethal” Chemical Weapons Buying Spree

Federal agents’ indiscriminate use of tear gases and “less-lethal” projectiles has become a mainstay of protest crackdowns.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is set to order a vast arsenal of chemical grenades, sprays, projectiles, and other weapons, according to procurement materials reviewed by The Intercept. The purchase follows months of abuse of these very munitions on American streets.

CBP will spend up to $50 million on what it refers to as “Less Lethal Specialty Munitions,” a euphemism for weapons intended to merely hurt or disable a target rather than killing them. The agency is looking for a vendor who can supply vast quantities of 123 different types of munitions across 10 different categories, the contracting document says.

“When there’s so many different kinds, it makes you question, tactically, what’s the goal there?”

“When there’s so many different kinds, it makes you question, tactically, what’s the goal there?”

“The sheer quantity and the myriad different weapons is the most remarkable thing to me,” Rohini Haar, an emergency physician and researcher of less lethal ordnance told The Intercept. “When there’s so many different kinds, it makes you question, tactically, what’s the goal there?”

Federal agents’ indiscriminate use of “less-lethal” chemical weapons against the nonviolent demonstrators became a hallmark of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Contract documents show the Department of Homeland Security will continue to stockpile a massive arsenal of tear gases and projectile weapons. (Neither CBP nor its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, immediately responded to requests for comment.)

Haar questioned whether the Department of Homeland Security will be able to suitably train federal agents to use such a wide variety of weapons.

“Each of them has a different sort of technical spec or specifications,” she explained. “Some of them are handheld grenades that you have to know to throw, but not hit people’s heads. Some of them are fired from a weapon, like a launcher, and so you have to be standing farther away than you would be with a grenade.”

The shopping list includes a litany of different ways to hit people and objects with two common types of tear gas: chlorobenzalmalononitrile, or CS, a chemical weapon previously used by the U.S. in Vietnam but now banned for military use, and oleoresin capsicum, or OC, derived from chili peppers.

CBP agents already regularly use CS and OC-based weapons in the field, including against protesters. The procurement document shows that armed federal officers will continue to wield the threat of chemical agents against the public despite ample documentation of misuse.

Federal........

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