What exactly did Governor Walz say in his full televised remarks and where can the transcript be read?
Executive summary
Governor Tim Walz’s televised address responding to ICE activity in Minnesota urged Minnesotans to record immigration-enforcement encounters — “if you see ICE in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record,” a line printed verbatim in local reporting of the speech — and the full text of his remarks is available in published transcripts and recordings, notably a Twin Cities news site transcript and a C-SPAN video of the briefing [1] [2]. State government pages that ordinarily host press materials showed access/verification barriers at the time of reporting, so independent media and video archives are the clearest immediate sources for the full text [3] [4] [5].
1. What he said — the key, directly quoted line and its context
In the portion of the address most widely quoted, Walz told residents to document federal immigration enforcement actions: “if you see ICE in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record,” a directive printed as part of the speech text published by the Twin Cities website, which presented the governor’s “full address on ICE actions in Minnesota” [1]. That media posting contains the full speech text as provided to or transcribed by the outlet, and the quoted instruction appears framed as part of broader calls for community vigilance and oversight during the incident Walz was addressing [1].
2. Where the full transcript can be read or watched
The complete text of Walz’s remarks was published by the Twin Cities outlet in a piece headlined “Read Gov. Tim Walz’s full address on ICE actions in Minnesota,” which reproduces the full speech lines including the instruction to record ICE [1]. A video recording of the governor’s news conference is archived by C-SPAN, which posted a labeled event page for the briefing and thus provides the primary-source video to view the full televised remarks [2]. Reporters and researchers should consult both the Twin Cities transcript for a ready textual copy and the C-SPAN video for timing, tone, and any nonverbal context [1] [2].
3. Official state channels and access limitations
The Office of the Governor’s official news pages normally carry prepared remarks and press releases, but attempts to retrieve some Walz press materials during the reporting window encountered “Verifying your browser” interception messages and incident IDs on mn.gov press-release pages, which impeded direct access to an official hosted transcript [3] [4] [5]. Because of those access barriers, independent outlets’ transcripts and archival video proved the most accessible repositories for the full televised text at the time this analysis was compiled [1] [2].
4. Related statements and disputed characterizations in other reporting
Other outlets and public filings have invoked or contested different Walz remarks in this political moment: for example, a New York Times interactive referenced a letter and surrounding rhetoric about the state’s enforcement posture and included citations that allege prior social-media clips where Walz is said to have referred to ICE as “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo,” an assertion traceable through cited YouTube/X links in that piece [6]. That specific phrasing is tied in the NYT reporting to social clips and advocacy framing rather than to the Twin Cities transcript of the recent televised address, so readers should distinguish the precise words printed in the January address transcript (the phone-recording line) from other contested quotations appearing in other contexts [1] [6].
5. How to verify and why multiple sources matter
To verify the governor’s exact wording, consult the Twin Cities printed transcript for an immediate textual record of the televised remarks and watch the C-SPAN video for the original broadcast; cross-checking between the two resolves transcription ambiguities and preserves cadence and emphasis [1] [2]. For official archival or policy documents, retry the governor’s newsroom pages although some mn.gov press pages exhibited verification gates at the time of retrieval; those gates produced incident IDs rather than full accessible content, which is why independent media and broadcast archives are essential for now [3] [4] [5].