On Tuesday, U.S. Senators Dr. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and David Perdue (R-Ga.) introduced a resolution “Opposing the targeted harassment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and employees and reaffirming the fundamental principle that public safety services should be provided without discrimination.” The resolution also calls on Portland (Ore.) Mayor Ted Wheeler to resign, stating that Wheeler ordered the city’s police to ignore ICE employees’ call for help during recent protests at the Portland ICE office.

“A politician deciding who gets help in an emergency based on politics is the kind of thing that happens in banana republics — not a democracy that ensures equal protection under the law,” Cassidy said. “For Mayor Wheeler to abandon this principle along with people being threatened by a violent mob is unacceptable. He needs to resign immediately.”

In fiscal year 2017, ICE arrested more than 127,000 criminals responsible for more than 76,000 dangerous drug offenses, 48,000 assault offenses, more than 11,000 weapon offenses, more than 5,000 sexual assault offenses, more than 2,000 kidnapping offenses, and more than 1,800 homicide offenses, according to a report from Cassidy’s office.

In the fight against the opioid epidemic last year, ICE seized 2,370 pounds of fentanyl and 6,967 pounds of heroin. ICE also rescued 518 human trafficking victims and 904 child exploitation victims last year.

Cassidy and Perdue’s resolution also addresses comments made by New York politicians Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cynthia Nixon. The resolution states that Ocasio-Cortez, a candidate for Congress, “welcomed the support of Occupy ICE LA, a group that called (ICE) a ‘genocidal ethnic cleansing machine’ and ‘the Gestapo,’ and posted photos of ICE employees on the internet, encouraging activists to ‘[k]now their faces, never allow them to feel safe.”

The resolution also stated that Nixon, a candidate for governor of New York, said that ICE is a “terrorist organization.”

Cassidy and Purdue’s resolution calls for the Senate to take three actions:

• To express solidarity with the men and women of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement who bring human traffickers, drug traffickers, gang members, and violent criminals to justice;
• To condemn the doxxing and targeted harassment of all officers and employees of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the violent threats they continue to endure from leftwing activists. Doxxing is the release of private information about an individual, such as addresses and personal phone numbers, typically over the Internet or social media.
• To call on the mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, to immediately resign so that a leader committed to protecting all law-abiding citizens and public servants from harm can assume the duties of mayor of Portland.