7 Extreme Democrat Attacks on ICE Help Explain Why Some Americans Are Losing Their Minds

Every day, it seems anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement agitators perpetrate a new atrocity against innocent people, and Democrats demonizing ICE arguably bear some of the blame.

On Sunday, they effectively laid siege to the Home2 Suites by Hilton Hotel, smashing the windows and spray-painting anti-ICE slogans, leading both state police and federal agents to respond.

On Tuesday, Virginia Commonwealth University Health announced that it fired a nurse after she released social media videos urging medical providers to use a “sabotage tactic” against ICE, preparing syringes with saline or succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant that can cause temporary partial paralysis.

In arguably the most infuriating example, agitators invaded Cities Church in St. Paul, in the middle of a service, and effectively shut it down. They reportedly screamed in the faces of crying children, prevented parents from getting to their children, and stopped terrified parishioners from leaving. They justified this by noting that one of the pastors works for ICE.

The deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37, at the hands of immigration enforcement have contributed to the climate of hostility against ICE, but those incidents arguably do not explain this extreme hatred.

What leads people to think it’s acceptable to target ICE so much that they’re willing to harass innocents?

Seven extreme statements from Democrat officials might provide an answer.

1. Tim Walz

“[President] Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., said in a commencement ceremony at the University of Minnesota in May 2025. The Gestapo was the secret state police in Nazi Germany that helped carry out the Holocaust that killed an estimated 6 million Jews, and others.

Walz more recently threatened to deploy his state’s National Guard to oppose ICE, and suggested President Donald Trump had launched a “war” against his state.

2. JB Pritzker

Gov. JB Pritzker, D-Ill., also suggested that federal agents enforcing immigration law was akin to the oppression of Nazi Germany.

“How do you prove to somebody that you’re a U.S. citizen? The color of your skin? That’s not the country we live in,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to walk around with papers, the way that they did in the early days of Nazi Germany, to prove that you belong.”

Pritzker stood by the comparison on Tuesday in an appearance on the “I’ve Had It” podcast.

“Maybe you heard about a year ago, I think it got a lot of national play when I talked about defending Illinois and the fact that we’re living in a world that looks a whole lot like the early ’30s in Germany,” he said. “People on the right attacked me and said, ‘How dare you!’”

Now, he said, “A lot more people … among Democrats are saying, yeah, this feels a lot like Germany in the 1930s.” He repeatedly compared Trump to Hitler throughout the podcast episode.

3. Ilhan Omar

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., called ICE an “occupying force.”

When U.S. Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, Omar described the incident as “an execution by immigration enforcement.” She said ICE and Border Patrol are “terrorizing our communities, violating rights, and taking lives with zero accountability.” She accused Trump of turning the state into a “war zone where unchecked federal forces murder our neighbors.”

While Pretti’s death remains under investigation and the Border Patrol agents involved have been placed on leave, Omar’s rhetoric demonizes ICE beyond what the facts suggest.

4. Jason Crow

Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., wouldn’t rebut Pritzker’s Trump-Hitler comparison.

When CNN’s Kasie Hunt asked Crow about Pritzker’s claim, he said, “This president is in Chapter One of the autocrat‘s playbook. There‘s no doubt in my mind.”

5. Jim McGovern

“Trump is using ICE like a secret police force,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., wrote on X. “They’ve used Gestapo-like tactics to terrorize communities for nearly a year, and now they’re literally killing people.”

6. Gavin Newsom

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, compared America under Trump to foreign dictators before signing a law prohibiting ICE from wearing masks while carrying out raids in the Golden State. (ICE has started wearing masks in response to record threats and attacks against federal agents.)

“This is about the secret police,” Newsom said in a September press conference. “We’re not North Korea, Mr. President, we’re not the Soviet Union, we’re the United States of America, and we’re pushing back against these authoritarian tendencies and actions of this administration.”

7. Mark Warner

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., compared ICE to the secret police of Venezuela under Nicolas Maduro.

“This relates to Venezuela in the sense that sort of authoritarian, fascist state is what was existing,” he said.

These Democrats haven’t attacked a hotel, urged nurses to paralyze ICE agents, or invaded a church, but their hyperbolic condemnations of immigration enforcement arguably contributed to the climate of hatred that gives agitators permission to harass innocents in the name of fighting Nazis.

If ICE is the modern-day Gestapo, their reasoning goes, that justifies an aggressive response—even if that means harassing innocent people.

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