Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner spoke outside City Hall on a chilly Tuesday morning, flanked by activists holding signs that read in bold: “ICE OUT OF PHILADELPHIA.”
“This is a small bunch of wannabe Nazis. In a country of 350 million, we outnumber them,” said the George Soros-backed district attorney, holding his glasses in one gloved hand and gripping the podium with the other. “If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities, we will find you, we will achieve justice.”
This is far from the first time that a high-profile political figure has compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Nazis or Gestapo, fanning the flames of the ongoing far-left agitation against these individuals. Amid the unrest over arrests and deportations in Minneapolis, top Democrats and commentators have repeatedly encouraged the public to view ICE as evil, malicious, and aligned with Adolf Hitler’s forces.
In June 2025, Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch compared the deportations to a “Gestapo operation,” saying, “When you compare the old films of the Gestapo grabbing people off the streets of Poland and you compare them to those nondescript thugs who grabbed that graduate student, [it] does look like a Gestapo operation.”
He added: “You know my dad served in the Second World War … I think he’s looking down right now and he’s happy that I’m fighting today’s Nazis.”
“This is not Germany,” screamed Connecticut Rep. John Larson at an event opposing ICE in August 2025. “That is the SS and the Gestapo. This is the United States of America. Unmask yourselves.”
“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in May 2025, as the president’s deportation efforts ramped up. “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.”
At the time, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons slammed Walz’s comparisons, saying that crimes against ICE had risen 400%, due partially to careless “politically motivated rhetoric.” Since then, particularly in the wake of the shooting of Renee Good, a woman who was shot by an ICE agent as she rammed him with her car, violence against ICE has skyrocketed.
(Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images)
As of January 24, the Department of Homeland Security reported that officers are facing an 8,000% increase in death threats and more than a 1,300% increase in assaults. Those numbers are directly correlated to the rhetoric of politicians comparing ICE to Nazis, according to Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.
“Threatening rhetoric and this unprecedented violence against our law enforcement is incited by sanctuary politicians through their repeated vilification and demonization of law enforcement,” McLaughlin said earlier this month. “Comparing ICE day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences.”
But top Democrats have only leaned into these comparisons more. Walz himself drew some serious criticisms for comparing Minnesota children of illegal criminals to Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl whose diary tragically chronicled how she hid from the Nazis until she was ultimately captured and killed.
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside,” Walz, who did not respond to requests for comment, said on Sunday. “Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank … Somebody is going to write that children’s story about Minnesota, and there’s one person who can end this now.”
His remarks drew condemnation from even the Holocaust Museum, which pointed out that “Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish,” and said that “leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable.”
Demonstrators protest against ICE outside the state office of Senator Amy Klobuchar (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty Images)
“Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges,” the Holocaust Museum said in a statement.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton said it was not extreme to compare ICE to Nazis: “I don’t think that the comparisons with Nazi Germany are extreme.”
“Because that’s what happened too,” he said. “That’s why ordinary German citizens began to accept the idea that certain members of their community would be singled out — I mean, they have ICE tip lines — would be directly targeted in violation of the laws of the land, and it would be done by agents of the state. But, that’s what’s happening today in Minneapolis.”
And California Governor Gavin Newsom, who backtracked on some of his rhetoric comparing ICE to state-sponsored terrorism in an interview with Ben Shapiro two weeks ago, has taken to nicknaming Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, “Gestapo Greg.”
“Gestapo Greg says filming ICE agents with your cell phone is assault and justifies them shooting you in cold blood,” the California governor’s press office wrote on “X” on January 25. Earlier this year, he cautioned Americans against believing that “calls of fascism and authoritarianism are hyperbole.”
Asked by The Daily Wire on Wednesday if Newsom stood by his “Gestapo Greg” remarks on Bovino, Newsom spokesman Izzy Gardon responded: “Absolutely. Gestapo Greg is in S.S. solider cosplay.”
And asked whether the governor wants Democrats like Tim Walz to tone down their rhetoric comparing ICE to Nazis, Gardon responded: “What do you call masked men who gun down Americans in cold blood?”
Interestingly, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has refrained from going so far as to compare ICE to Nazis, though he is vociferously against ICE, told the federal immigration agents to “get the f*ck out of Minneapolis,” and accused them of causing chaos and distrust in the city.
Another high-profile Democrat who has not gone the Third Reich rhetoric route: Zohran Mamdani, who has heavily criticized ICE, called for their abolishment, and said “they wear masks because they know that what they are doing is wrong.” Mamdani and Frey didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Wire.
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