‘Resign’: Portland mayor issues scathing statement after protesters gassed at Portland ICE building
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson urged Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to resign and told their bosses to leave Portland in a scathing statement issued Saturday after federal agents launched tear gas at a large crowd protesting near the Portland ICE facility.
“To those who continue to work for ICE: Resign. To those who control this facility: Leave,” Wilson wrote. “Through your use of violence and the trampling of the Constitution, you have lost all legitimacy and replaced it with shame.”
Thousands of protesters, including children, marched through Portland and enveloped the blocks around the South Waterfront facility Saturday afternoon. Federal agents launched tear gas, pepper balls and rubber bullets at the crowd shortly after it arrived after some crossed the building’s property line and approached its security gate.
Wilson characterized the demonstration as a “peaceful daytime protest, where the vast majority of those present violated no laws, made no threat and posed no danger to federal forces.”
The federal government, Wilson said, “must, and will, be held accountable.” He said the city would soon impose a fee on detention facilities that use chemical agents.
“To those who continue to make these sickening decisions, go home, look in a mirror, and ask yourselves why you have gassed children,” Wilson wrote Saturday night.
Erin Hoover Barnett, a Southwest Portland resident and former Oregonian/OregonLive reporter who joined the protest Saturday, said she was about 100 yards from the facility 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.
The Portland Fire Bureau sent paramedics to treat people at the scene, Portland police said. Local police monitored the crowd but made no arrests on Saturday.
– Austin De Dios contributed to this report.
