Minnesota Gov. Walz’s Anne Frank–ICE Comparison Draws Holocaust Museum Rebuke

At a Sunday press conference on Minnesota’s ICE surge, Gov. Tim Walz compared immigrant children hiding from federal immigration agents to Anne Frank, saying kids in his state are afraid to go outside and that 'somebody's gonna write that children's story about Minnesota.' Former acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli called the analogy 'disgusting' on Fox News, accusing Walz of deliberately stoking chaos around immigration enforcement and being willing to see people hurt for political gain. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum issued an unusually direct public rebuke, stressing that Anne Frank was 'targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish' and that using her experience for political equivalencies is 'never acceptable,' particularly amid surging antisemitism in the U.S. The Anti‑Defamation League recently reported 9,354 antisemitic incidents in 2024, a record and a 344% increase over five years, giving added weight to concern that casual Holocaust analogies in U.S. political fights normalize or trivialize Nazi crimes. The dispute unfolds against the backdrop of aggressive Trump‑era ICE operations and protests in Minnesota, where both anti‑enforcement rhetoric and official defenses of federal agents are hardening into sharper, more inflammatory language on all sides.