Editors at National Review Online place Democrats’ immigration enforcement concerns in context.
In the summer of 1934, the Gestapo carried out a murderous purge against Chancellor Adolf Hitler’s internal party enemies known as the Night of the Long Knives. In the summer of 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained illegal immigrants and ensured they weren’t evading lawful immigration proceedings. Can you spot the difference?
Democrats apparently can’t.
“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” said Tim Walz at a May commencement address. He’s not alone. Congressman Stephen Lynch, of Massachusetts, said, “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.” Rachel Maddow invokes ICE in making the case that “we have a consolidating dictatorship in our country.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the agency should not exist. Representative Dan Goldman said that they were like “secret police” who need to be unmasked.
This inflamed rhetoric is firmly in the American tradition. It is also totally cracked and part of a febrile atmosphere around ICE’s operations. Some anti-ICE activists have been taking matters into their own hands. Eleven left-wing agitators ambushed an ICE facility in Alvarado, Texas, opening fire on agents and shooting one in the neck. In Portland, Ore., an incendiary device was thrown at officers. Another attacker in McAllen, Texas, shot a police officer and injured two Border Patrol employees. On Tuesday, a rioter threw a rock into and set fire to an ICE building in Washington State. There is a movement to “unmask” ICE agents, dox them, and encourage their harassment at their homes. The White House claims that ICE agents are facing a 700 percent surge in assaults.
The post Countering Democrats’ over-the-top ICE critique first appeared on John Locke Foundation.
