Fired up. The governor minced no words in addressing 239 University of Minnesota law students at graduation. He was escalating a theme from his 2024 vice presidential campaign theme of Trump as a fascist.
“How else to explain masked agents? Unmarked vans?”
MINNEAPOLIS — Governor Tim Walz likened the federal ICE deportation agency under President Trump to Nazis. This was in an energetic commencement address to University of Minnesota law students. “Donald Trump’s modern=day Grsdgapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Walz told students. “They are in unmarked vans, wearing masks,. and shipping detainees to foreign torture dungeons.” Walz didn’t hold back. ICE practices, he said, give detainees “no chance to mount a defense, not even a chance to kiss a loved one goodbye. They’re just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans, and disappeared.” There have been numerous ICE arrests in Minnesota that have followed the playbook tyat Walz described. ICE arrests of immigrants nationwide, almost of of dark skin, have exceeded 40,000 since the start of theTrump presidency.
Supercharged language
The German secret police under Nazi rule in the 1930s and 1940 were called Gestapo s. They ruthlessly suppressed opposition to the Nazis in Germany and occupied Europe, and sent Jewish people and others to concentration camps. From 1936 the Gestapo was headed by brutal Hitler loyalist and fellow white supremacist Heinrich Himmler.