Israel plans to deport a U.S. human rights activist. Democrats are pushing back.

A group of 17 Democratic lawmakers wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week to ask his government to stop the planned deportation of Omar Shakir, a U.S. citizen and director of the Human Rights Watch office for Israel and the Palestinian territories.

“To carry out our own human rights work and responsibilities in the U.S. House of Representatives, we rely on the reports of Human Rights Watch for balanced accounts of human rights violations wherever they may occur, including here in the United States,” the letter read, adding that deporting Shakir would “reinforce the impression that Israel is increasingly hostile to human rights defenders.”