Stop Comparing ICE To The Gestapo, Homeland Security Says
The Department of Homeland Security is now seeking to distance itself from comparisons to Nazi Germany after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) called its Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents a “modern-day Gestapo.”
“It is absolutely sickening to compare ICE law enforcement agents to the Gestapo,” Homeland Security said Sunday on its official X account, referencing the police force that apprehended and deported groups of people labeled political enemies in Nazi Germany.
“Attacks and demonization of ICE and our partners is wrong,” the department said. “Our message is clear: DO NOT come to this country illegally. If you do, we will arrest you, deport you and you will never return.”
The post also echoed a statistic contained in last week’s statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who said “attacks and smears” against ICE have led to a “413% increase in assaults,” although she did not provide more details.
Video of ICE operations around the country has sounded alarm bells among immigration and democracy advocates as agents with face coverings are seen wrangling people into their custody. President Donald Trump and his supporters say that they are targeting gang members and violent criminals, although in many cases, the administration is seeking to deport people without allowing them a chance to prove they are not who the administration says they are.
Some of the targets have merely been students affiliated with pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations, and others have been attempting to attain asylum status in the United States through the courts.
The administration deported some 260 migrants to a notorious El Salvadoran prison facility known as CECOT, where inmates are kept in brutal conditions, only pausing while federal lawsuits proceed.
Walz referenced the ICE operations during his commencement speech at the University of Minnesota’s law school on Saturday.
“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets. They’re in unmarked vans wearing masks being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons,” he said.
“No chance to mount a defense, not even a chance to kiss a loved one goodbye, just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans and disappeared,” the governor went on. “To be clear: There’s no way for us to know whether they were actually criminals or not, because they refused to give them a trial. We’re supposed to just take their word for it.”
Walz called on the new law graduates to live up to their pledge to uphold the law, saying they are “graduating into a genuine emergency” under Trump.
“This is what the crumbling of rule of law looks like in real time. And it’s exactly what the founders of this nation feared: A tyrant, abusing power to persecute scapegoats and enemies,” Walz said in a speech that sparked applause and cheers from the graduates.