Portland mayor demands ICE leave city after federal agents teargas protesters

The mayor of Portland, Oregon, demanded US Immigration and Customs Enforcement leave his city after federal agents launched teargas at a crowd of demonstrators – including young children – outside an ICE facility during a weekend protest that he and others characterized as peaceful.

Witnesses said agents deployed teargas, pepper balls and rubber bullets as thousands of marchers arrived at the South Waterfront facility on Saturday. A former OregonLive reporter said she was about 100 yards from the building when “what looked like two guys with rocket launchers” started dousing the crowd with gas.

“To be among parents frantically trying to tend to little children in strollers, people using motorized carts trying to navigate as the rest of us staggered in retreat, unsure of how to get to safety, was terrifying,” Barnett wrote in an email to OregonLive. Portland mayor Keith Wilson said the daytime demonstration was peaceful, “where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat and posed no danger” to federal agents.

“To those who continue to work for ICE: resign. To those who control this facility: leave,” Wilson wrote in a statement on Saturday night. “Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame.” The Portland fire bureau sent paramedics to treat people at the scene, police said. Police officers monitored the crowd but made no arrests on Saturday.

Donald Trump posted on Saturday on social media that it was up to local law enforcement agencies to police protests in their cities. However, the president said he has instructed homeland security secretary Kristi Noem to have federal agents be vigilant in guarding US government facilities. “Please be aware that I have instructed ICE and/or Border Patrol to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property. There will be no spitting in the faces of our Officers, there will be no punching or kicking the headlights of our cars, and there will be no rock or brick throwing at our vehicles, or at our Patriot Warriors,” Trump wrote. “If there is, those people will suffer an equal, or more, consequence.”

The federal government “must, and will, be held accountable”, the mayor said. “To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children.”