The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday rebuked politicians for comparing illegal immigrants targeted by ICE to Anne Frank after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D.) did just that.
“Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable,” the museum said on X. “Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”
The statement followed Walz’s controversial comments in which he compared ICE agents to Nazis and illegal immigrants to Anne Frank. “We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside,” Walz declared.
“Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota,” he added.
This isn’t the first time Walz compared the Trump administration’s immigration policies to the Holocaust. During a May 2025 commencement ceremony Walz called ICE the “modern-day Gestapo.”
“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks off the streets,” he told the graduates.
Earlier this month, Walz encouraged resistance to ICE. Agents are “just plain grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans, kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process,” he said. “Let’s be very, very clear: This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it is a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”
Tensions in Minnesota exploded after a protester, Alex Pretti, was shot on Saturday by immigration enforcement officers following an altercation. President Donald Trump on Monday announced that he would be sending border czar Tom Homan to oversee the operations in Minnesota. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and some—but not all—Border Patrol agents plan to leave the state, Fox News reported.
Trump on Monday said he had spoken to Walz about the unrest. “Governor Tim Walz called me with the request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
