Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) linked the murder of Mollie Tibbetts to the Democrat Party’s hostility towards Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and broader border security issues. He offered his remarks in a Tuesday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with Breitbart News Senior Editors-at-Large Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.

“ICE protects not just Americans,” said Cassidy. “Somehow we think we’re doing a favor to people who are here — whether legally or illegally — by allowing someone with a record of violent crime to return to that community. That’s a false compassion.”

LISTEN:

Cassidy continued, “Let’s just try and meet the left where they are, that we have to care for folks if they’re not American citizens. Not allowing ICE to take out somebody who can kill another person and will kill another person is a tragedy waiting to happen.”

Cassidy linked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s — a self-described “democratic socialist” who has called for ICE’s abolition — derision of ICE to the murder of Tibbetts.

“[Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez, she’s actually in one sense speaking what most Democrats will not say but some of them believe and … calling the ICE ‘the Gestapo,'” stated Cassidy. “[ICE is] trying to protect Americans, trying to enforce our laws, laws that are just [and] benefit everybody that lives here whether you’re legal or not.”

Cassidy warned that congressional Democrat majorities would lead to “ICE being treated as if they are the villains and not the ones that catch the villains.”

Cassidy added, “When we speak about ICE, let’s speak about them as fellow Americans who, among the things that they have done, last year they seized, I’m told, about 2,400 pounds of fentanyl [and] 7,000 pounds of heroin.

Cassidy went on, “They’ve rescued 518 human trafficking victims; 904 child exploitation victims were addressed. They’ve gotten folks associated with 48,000 assaults. These are our fellow Americans capturing 5,000 sexual assault offenders, 2,000 kidnapping offenders. [They are] our fellow Americans who are helping us with drugs, human trafficking, violent crime and sexual assault.”

Cassidy described Democrats and leftists “vilifying” ICE: “These folks who want us to somehow hate our fellow Americans who are part of that government agency, I don’t know how to understand it.”

Cassidy reflected on President Donald Trump’s negotiations with Democrats over the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.

“People say the president doesn’t meet the folks half way; totally wrong,” remarked Cassidy. “If you look at what he offered for the DACA kids — those brought here when they were very young by their parents — he actually was going to do a deal that was better for the DACA kids than Obama did, but he said in return, ‘Let me secure the southern border.’”

Cassidy continued, “[Donald Trump] said, ‘Maybe this deal for the DACA kids is not what I would have proposed, but you don’t get everything you want. But I will give this to you, better than Obama gave you, if you will help me secure the southern border.’ Now, Democrats hate that. If I was a DACA kid, I’d be very mad at Democrats. He gave them a great deal. They turned it down.”

Cassidy recommended using monies confiscated from Mexican criminal cartels fund construction of a southern border wall.

Cassidy said, “to My own solution? Right now the cartels are moving tens of billions of  dollars from selling drugs from the United States to Mexico. If we can confiscate a greater portion of that money, we can use drug proceeds to build a wall to secure the southern border.”

On Tuesday, Cassidy introduced a Senate resolution condemning “the ‘Abolish ICE’ movement” and affiliated Democrats.

Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 9 p.m. to midnight Eastern (6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Pacific).

Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.