Comparing ICE to the Gestapo Lets America Off the Hook

Bonnie Jean Feldkamp
Thu, 29 Jan 2026 21:00:00 -0800
Opinion

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement terrorizes our nation, I keep seeing social media posts that compare ICE to Nazi Germany's Secret State Police, the Gestapo. Some in Trump's ranks like to lean into Nazi symbolism and cosplay in reminiscent trench coats, but don't let that misguide you.

As horrific as the Holocaust was, Nazi Germany is not the example of evil we should be reaching for. The terror we are seeing in the streets from ICE comes from a very American playbook.

We cannot consider Nazi Germany as the historic precedent because the Third Reich took its cues from America. Remember, Hitler admired our "one-drop rule," our banning of interracial marriage and our Black Codes. U.S. laws that had denied citizenship to Native Americans along with Filipinos and others who lived in U.S. territories influenced portions of the Nazi Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jewish people of their citizenship while scrutinizing everyone's ancestry.
Updated: Fri Jan 30, 2026

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement terrorizes our nation, I keep seeing social media posts that compare ICE to Nazi Germany's Secret State Police, the Gestapo. Some in Trump's ranks like to lean into Nazi symbolism and cosplay in reminiscent trench coats, but don't let that misguide you.

As horrific as the Holocaust was, Nazi Germany is not the example of evil we should be reaching for. The terror we are seeing in the streets from ICE comes from a very American playbook.

We cannot consider Nazi Germany as the historic precedent because the Third Reich took its cues from America. Remember, Hitler admired our "one-drop rule," our banning of interracial marriage and our Black Codes. U.S. laws that had denied citizenship to Native Americans along with Filipinos and others who lived in U.S. territories influenced portions of the Nazi Nuremberg Laws that stripped Jewish people of their citizenship while scrutinizing everyone's ancestry.

If we are to rid ourselves of this racist rot, we have to dig it up by the root, and its thick taproot runs deep through America's DNA.

Instead of invoking Hitler's regime when it comes to ICE, we should be reaching for names such as Andrew Jackson and remembering his Trail of Tears. The American president pictured on every $20 bill made horse bridles from the human skin of Native Americans. He also forbade the U.S. Postal Service from delivering any publications that supported abolitionism.

When Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, America's intricate caste system had been humming along to the tune of white supremacy for hundreds of years. Jim Crow laws were solidified by the Supreme Court thanks to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, and America was deeply segregated by law and custom. Latinos and Asians were also subjected to segregation, though it was not as frequently codified as with Black Americans. Even still, segregation was socially enforced in public life for anyone not white.

Now, as ICE terrorizes our communities and we witness legislation dismantling anything related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we're not backsliding very far. The Civil Rights Act was only 62 years ago, and the Fair Housing Act was only 58 years ago. Our nation's history traces a much longer path.

Let us be honest about what we are witnessing. America knows how to do racism. America knows how to terrorize its people. And as Isabel Wilkerson wrote in her book "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," terror is precisely the point.

It was the point when Native Americans were massacred and mutilated. It was the point when slaveholders tortured humans they considered property. It was the point when slave patrols made examples of enslaved people who attempted to escape, and it was the point when law enforcement looked the other way while lynching was tolerated, normalized and celebrated. And it is precisely the point now as ICE infiltrates our communities.

This is a familiar flex. History is not warning us from across the ocean; it is begging us to finally recognize ourselves clearly enough so we might actually choose something different for our future.