'The door is open!' TODD BENSMAN's eye witness report of a Mexican border town and 10,000 migrants

Armed only with hand-held radios, four uniformed Mexican immigration officers didn't hear the pounding footsteps until it was too late. They were going to be overrun.
A charging, screaming crowd of migrants, some carrying young children in their arms, stampeded down the bank of the Rio Grande River just outside of Matamoros, Mexico.
I watched as the immigration officers tried to hold back the mob, but it was pointless. When force failed, they tried reason.

'Please, the babies! The children! You're going to hurt the children!' an officer shouted in Spanish. 'The children could drown! Stop! Please stop what you're doing!'

Regardless, women with little ones and men with older children on their shoulders rushed into the river that marks the U.S. Mexico border.