The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., issued a statement Monday effectively calling Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s comparison of U.S. immigration enforcement operations to Nazi Germany “deeply offensive.”
Walz made the comments Sunday, following the shooting death of 37-year-old anti-ICE agitator Alex Pretti, who authorities said got into a skirmish with Border Patrol agents while armed.
“We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody’s going to write that children’s story about Minnesota,” the governor said.
“And there’s one person who can end this now,” he added, referring to President Donald Trump.
Anne Frank was a Jewish teenage girl who wrote a diary describing her family’s experience in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. After two years in hiding, the family was discovered. Anne died in a concentration camp in February 1945, months before the end of the war in Europe. Her mother and sister, Edith and Margot, also died in concentration camps. Only her father, Otto, survived the war after being liberated from Auschwitz.
In response to Walz’s remarks, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum posted on social media: “Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”
Walz’s comments also drew criticism from Trump’s anti-Semitism envoy at the State Department, Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, who posted on X: “Ignorance like this cheapens the horror of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law.
“She was hauled off to a death camp because of her race and religion. Her story has nothing to do with the illegal immigration, fraud, and lawlessness plaguing Minnesota today.”
Kaploun concluded: “Our brave law enforcement should be commended, not tarred with this historically illiterate and antisemitic comparison.”
On Monday, Trump announced he is sending border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis in response to ongoing civil unrest in the city.
The president also said the same day he had a “very good call” with Walz about working together to remove criminal illegal aliens from the state.
“We, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength,” Trump added.
The Daily Wire’s Cameron Arcand reported that Walz’s office confirmed the call and that Trump agreed to reduce the number of federal agents in Minnesota.
Fox News correspondent Bill Mellugin posted on X, “Multiple federal sources confirm to @FoxNews that Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino & some, not all Border Patrol agents, will be leaving the state of Minnesota imminently.”
ICE agents are separate from Border Patrol.
