What specific ICE operations have been compared to Gestapo methods?
Executive summary
Several recent ICE operations and enforcement practices have been explicitly likened to Gestapo methods by politicians, commentators, and activists — chiefly in response to masked, unmarked tactical raids, targeted sweeps in cities such as Minneapolis and New York, and named enforcement actions like “Operation Salvo” and what DHS has referred to as “Operation Midway Blitz” — but scholars warn these analogies are rhetorical and historically risky [1] [2] [3]. Government officials dispute the comparison and argue the rhetoric fuels violence against officers, while critics point to patterns of secrecy, alleged bypassing of judicial norms, and aggressive deportation tactics as the basis for the analogy [4] [5] [6].
1. Which named operations drew the comparison
The label “Gestapo” has been attached to specific ICE actions in public discourse around Operation Salvo — announced by DHS leadership as a New York operation targeting gang activity — and to local enforcement campaigns described in DHS statements as “Operation Midway Blitz,” both of which politicians and local officials invoked when criticizing federal tactics in urban areas [1] [2]. Media and opinion outlets reporting on these operations explicitly quoted elected officials and columnists who used the Gestapo analogy in response to those deployments [1] [7].
2. What tactical behaviors prompted the analogy
Critics cite masked and plainclothes agents, unmarked vehicles and early‑morning “secret” raids, and aggressive arrest and deportation practices as the tactical features that echo, rhetorically, the Gestapo’s methods of secrecy and intimidation [8] [6] [9]. Opinion pieces and local editorials frame these tactics as creating a climate of fear among immigrant communities — the very social effect scholars say fuels Gestapo comparisons — though those commentators stop short of asserting full historical equivalence [8] [5] [9].
3. High‑profile incidents that intensified comparisons
The killing of Renee Nicole Good during an ICE operation in Minneapolis and confrontations between federal agents and protesters around federal buildings were widely cited moments that intensified talk of “Gestapo tactics,” with progressive outlets and columnists arguing the events were illustrative of a secret‑police dynamic [1] [7]. Those incidents became focal points for governors and mayors who publicly likened ICE to Nazi secret police as part of broader political denunciations [2] [7].
4. Political and institutional responses
The Department of Homeland Security pushed back strongly against Gestapo comparisons, calling such rhetoric “sickening,” attributing rising assaults on officers to demonizing language, and defending ICE’s law‑enforcement mission while naming specific arrests tied to their operations [4] [2]. DHS statements and political rebuttals frame the comparison as inflammatory and dangerous, emphasizing officer safety and criminal arrests rather than systemic parallels [4].
5. Scholarly caution and the limits of the analogy
Historians and Holocaust scholars quoted in reporting urge caution: while contemporary fears about authoritarian drift make the Gestapo metaphor resonant, the Gestapo’s role in a totalitarian regime that merged policing, political suppression, and genocide differs in degree and context from a U.S. federal immigration agency operating under law and oversight structures — a distinction underscored even by commentators who use the analogy to dramatize policy concerns [3] [10]. Several sources note that invoking Nazi comparisons risks trivializing history even as it signals real public anxiety over secrecy and the expansion of executive enforcement powers [3] [10].
6. Where reporting diverges and what remains unproven
Reporting shows a split between eyewitnesses, activists and opinion writers who emphasize masked raids, alleged bypassing of judicial checks, and named operations as evidence of “Gestapo‑style” behavior, and DHS and some official accounts that characterize these claims as rhetorical attacks that endanger personnel and misstate facts [6] [4] [9]. Available reporting documents the rhetoric and the operations that triggered it, but does not provide unified, empirical proof that ICE has institutionalized the full array of secret‑police powers that defined the Gestapo — a point scholars explicitly make when cautioning against literal equivalence [3] [10].