Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz compared the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel executing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda to the Gestapo in a Saturday commencement address at the University of Minnesota law school.
President Donald Trump issued several executive orders to address illegal immigration and border security, including designating Mexican drug cartels and South and Central American gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, and the president has also invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up the deportation of gang members.
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Walz, the failed Democratic nominee for vice president in 2024, suggested during the speech that Trump is using ICE to implement his immigration agenda in similar fashion to how Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler used the Gestapo secret police to target opponents, according to RealClearPolitics.
“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Walz claimed. “They’re in unmarked vans, wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons—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.”
“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,” Walz continued. “We’re supposed to just take their word for it.”
Democrats initially rallied around Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an adjudicated member of MS-13 deported to El Salvador in March, as a symbol of resistance to Trump’s immigration policies, and several members of Congress, including Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, traveled to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia. The Trump administration released a 13-page dossier detailing the evidence suggesting that Abrego Garcia is a MS-13 gang member in April, which included rulings from immigration courts that found he was a member of the El Salvadoran prison gang.
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Recent polling indicates that 48.3% of Americans approve Trump’s approach to immigration so far, and that 48.9% disapprove, according to RealClearPolling. A White House fact sheet released in late April showed that border crossings, migrant encounters and “gotaways” were all down by 93% or more through the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
Walz also claimed Trump was trying to intimidate members of Congress, referencing a chaotic May 9 incident involving Democratic New Jersey Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez Jr. outside an ICE facility in Newark, New Jersey. The Democratic lawmakers denied wrongdoing in a May 11 appearance on CNN.
Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy toured the ICE facility in Newark and describer her observations during a Monday appearance on “Fox and Friends.”
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“ICE has nothing to hide,” Campos-Duffy said. “They have nothing to be ashamed of. This facility is so clean. It has, you know, all kind of recreation facilities, outdoor soccer field, weight equipment, domino tables. It has telephones everywhere with signs next to them of how they can, phone numbers to reach their consulate and also legal facilities, computer web cams.”
“There are doors on the bedrooms and they aren’t even locked,” Campos-Duffy continued. “The facility actually looks like a high school.”
Walz is considered a possible Democratic candidate for president in the 2028 election cycle.
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