There may be nothing more controversial in the United States today than the question of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enforcing America’s immigration laws. Those laws are pretty straightforward, calling for federal authorities to detain and deport anyone found in the country illegally; but those laws have fallen into disfavor in some circles, causing protests and riots, particularly in Minneapolis.
Many—such as Governor Tim Walz—are calling ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo,” comparing the enforcement of immigration law to the Holocaust.
This comparison equates taking someone who is in the country illegally—at best—and sending them home, to sending people who have committed no crimes and are in their country of birth to rancid ghettoes, slave labor camps, and gas chambers.
This comparison also equates the Jewish people the Nazis rounded up to the people ICE is deporting, when 70% of the illegal aliens ICE has detained under the Trump administration either have criminal convictions, or are currently in the process of being prosecuted for violent crimes. The other 30% are either family members of those with criminal records, or associates suspected of being members of criminal gangs.
The notion that sending such people back to the nations of which they are citizens is the same as sending them to Auschwitz is absurd and disgusting.
I was stationed in Germany for three years and visited Dachau. I’m also married to a Polish immigrant, and have been to Auschwitz. If you have not been to Auschwitz, you can read about the place some people want to compare ICE detention here. There is no viable way to compare these things, and those doing so need to stop.
As if that were not enough, when Governor Walz has told Minnesotans to gather ’round and record everything ICE agents are doing “for future prosecutions,” one must understand that these politicians are not talking about prosecuting ICE under federal law. They are explicitly talking about prosecuting ICE agents for crimes against humanity in international courts—which is an intentional and a direct comparison to the Holocaust.
There is also the possibility that Walz, Frey, Ilhan Omar—who pretended that ICE detained her son while he was leaving a Target—and others may be doing this to distract from the Minneapolis welfare fraud scandal—a scandal that otherwise would end some of their political careers. To the degree that this is true, they are encouraging violence, knowing people will get killed, to try and hang on to power.
If we did want an apt comparison, we might compare Walz’s anti-ICE riots to Hitler’s Kristallnacht, except that, instead of targeting Jewish people, Walz and Frey are targeting officers of a federal law enforcement agency. One which arrested a very real Jew-hater, namely October 7-justifying Hamas activist Mahmoud Khalil—now, after illegal judicial interventions, soon to be deported to Algeria.
Mayor Jacob Frey has called ICE an “occupying force,” and ordered ICE to “get the f—k out of Minneapolis.” Walz has referred to ICE’s presence as “a war that’s being waged against Minnesota,” and demonized their enforcement of federal immigration law as “organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”
Walz has gone so far as to compare ICE protesters in Minneapolis to the First Minnesota Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg. The First Minnesota was a famed Civil War unit that played a central, costly role in defending Cemetery Ridge on the second day of the battle. The First Minnesota was ordered to charge into a much larger Confederate force as a stalling action, buying time for reinforcements to arrive, and, while the First Minnesota was successful, they suffered 80% casualties.
The notion that sending such people back to the nations of which they are citizens is the same as sending them to Auschwitz is absurd and disgusting.
As if this is not enough, Walz keeps threatening to call up the Minnesota National Guard to protect protestors, and illegals, from ICE—a move that would put the National Guard in direct, armed opposition to federal officers.
Anyone who knows the history of the First Minnesota will read Tim Walz’ words as telling protestors to throw themselves against ICE even if it means taking casualties, and, though Walz is smart enough to know how far to push things before it legally becomes incitement, this crossed the line, and now two people are dead because of it.
To truly understand what is happening in Minneapolis, and, to a lesser extent, in other parts of the country, it helps to understand the incentives and the history that led us here.
The incentive is power.
Anyone in the country, legally or not, is counted in the U.S. Census. Congress is then apportioned based upon that count. Because of this, a state like California can inflate its membership in the House of Representatives by allowing people to immigrate into it illegally, or by attracting illegal immigrants from other states.
This also increases the number of Electoral College votes a state gets, creating an incentive for states to use illegal immigration to boost the representation of their state relative to the country as a whole both in the House and in helping choose the president.
Now that we understand the incentives, let’s look at the history.
On November 8, 1971, Berkeley, California, declared itself a “city of refuge” for members of the armed forces who deserted to avoid the Vietnam War. This was the first law in the nation barring local authorities from turning criminals over to federal authorities. Federal law mandates that local authorities turn over such people, so this law violated the supremacy clause of the Constitution.
America pulled out of the Vietnam war before the federal government had cause to challenge the Berkley law, but then, in 1979, the Los Angeles Police Department issued Special Order 70, instructing officers not to inquire into or take any enforcement action based on an individual’s immigration status.
In 1982, the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, declared itself a “sanctuary” for all illegal immigrants fleeing Central American civil wars. Then San Francisco passed a “city of refuge” resolution in 1985, signed by Mayor Dianne Feinstein, declaring support for refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. San Francisco extended its law with a binding ordinance in 1989 (No. 375-89), prohibiting city resources from aiding federal deportation efforts. This is often cited as the first enforceable sanctuary city ordinance, and laws like this began to pop up in other locations throughout the country.
All of these laws violate the supremacy clause, ordering local authorities to break federal law whenever they arrest someone in the country illegally, by refusing to turn such people over to federal authorities.
In some cases, in order to avoid “violating” federal law, local authorities have been instructed not to prosecute anyone in the country illegally, creating de facto immunity and encouraging criminal gangs of illegal aliens to set up shop, such as MS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) and Tren de Aragua.
In 2002, border patrol was separated from internal immigration law enforcement, through the creation of ICE via the Homeland Security Act.
Barack Obama was widely criticized for rounding up and deporting more than 3.1 million illegal immigrants, but, as soon as Donald Trump became president, Trump was blamed for all of the policies the Obama administration had instituted and retained, and Obama’s record, once so controversial, was conveniently forgotten. For example, the so-called “family separation” policy—which was actually just enforcement of the 1997 Reno v. Flores settlement mandating that illegal minors not be detained with adults—was falsely attributed to President Trump and illustrated with pictures of “kids in cages” taken in 2014 under Obama. Trump made illegal immigration a central part of his 2016 campaign, and, after Trump won that election, the entire Democratic Party went all-in on destroying him.
The incentive is power.
Destroying Trump started with Russian collusion, but soon anything Trump wanted to do was spun in the worst possible light, and suddenly “defund the Police” became a thing. ICE then became the poster-boy for police to eliminate.
Joe Biden did not eliminate ICE, but he did transform it from an immigration law enforcement agency into the world’s largest travel agency, flying illegal aliens into the interior of the country, hoping to flip some red states blue and to increase the number of House seats (and Electoral College votes) in blue states.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) found that Joe Biden had funneled $59 million through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to house illegal migrants in luxury hotels, while the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had spent as much as $31 billion on caring for people migrating through Central America into the United States.
The number of people who illegally migrated into the United States under Joe Biden is not yet fully known. One is estimate is more than 9.5 million between 2021 and 2024, representing those border patrol officers physically saw cross the border, and including 1.5 million “gotaways” during that period. That’s in addition to those who were already here.
Donald Trump ran on illegal immigration again in 2024. In most of the country, ICE is doing its job quietly, with local police either assisting directly, or, in the case of most “sanctuary cities,” local police at least ensure that protestors do not obstruct ICE during operations.
In Minneapolis, however, elected officials are encouraging protestors to obstruct ICE, and are barring local police from protecting ICE from those who riot, obstruct, or commit violence against them.
By invoking the First Minnesota, and by comparing ICE to the Gestapo, Walz has all but declared war. But, just as when he bailed on his soldiers as a frocked Sergeant Major, refusing to deploy with them, this, too, is a war he refuses to fight himself.
Tim Walz talks big, but he lets others suffer the consequences.
People can have whatever opinion they want about immigration law. It is a free country and we do not all have to agree. One thing we should agree on, though, is that the President of the United States swears an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.
Joe Biden refused to follow his oath, at least in relation to immigration law, but Donald Trump is enforcing those laws, and, in a democratic republic, though protestors can protest laws they do not like, they cannot change them—and cannot stop people from enforcing it.
Changing federal law takes Congress.
Tim Walz can talk to Congress. So can Jacob Frey. Ilhan Omar is in Congress, and, to her credit, she has actually promised to defund ICE and to let anyone able to enter our country stay.
The public does not want these things, outside of those rioting in Minneapolis, who likely don’t even represent the majority in their own city.
ICE is not the Gestapo, immigration law enforcement is not the Holocaust, and Tim Walz is not Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill was a hero. Tim Walz is a fraud.
