Minnesota's Governor, Tim Walz, continued to ramp up rhetoric surrounding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in his state, likening their presence to that of Nazis and suggesting a Minnesota child would one day write an Anne Frank-style story about hiding from federal authorities, referencing the Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis before being captured and murdered in a concentration camp.
"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," Walz said on Sunday. "Somebody is going to write that children's story about Minnesota, and there's one person who can end this now."
Gov. Walz: "We grew up reading the story of Anne Frank. Somebody is gonna write one regarding Minnesota." pic.twitter.com/t8LEAFhZEr
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 25, 2026
“If it was the intention of Donald Trump to make an example of Minnesota, then I’m damn proud of the example that the world is seeing,” the governor added.
Walz then went on to describe Alex Pretti as an everyday, innocent American and blasted the Trump administration for slandering him as a domestic terrorist, calling out several officials by name.
"This family has gone through enough," Walz said of Pretti’s relatives. "And to have the most powerful man in the world drag their dead son with absolutely no evidence and gaslight the entire country."
"Sitting behind a keyboard at 2 a.m. and besmirching a VA nurse and a son and a coworker and a friend is despicable beyond all description," he added.
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"Beloved by his family, accomplished ICU nurse, skillful in ability to work with veterans, someone who is beloved by the community, no criminal record, lawful firearms owner," Walz said. "And then you heard the most powerful people in the world, certainly in this country, president, vice president, Gregory Bovino, Kristi Noem, narrate to you what you were looking at, that this was a domestic terrorist, crazed, running at law enforcement with the intent to kill massive numbers of that, sullying his name within minutes of this event happening."
"Then closing the crime scene, sweeping away the evidence, defying a court order and not allowing anyone to look at it," he said. "I don't care if you are conservative and you are flying a Donald Trump flag, a libertarian ‘Don’t Tread on Me,’ a Democratic Socialist, this is an inflection point, America."
"If we cannot all agree that the smearing of an American citizen and besmirching everything they stood for and asking us not to believe what we saw, I don't know what else to tell you."
The Trump administration has rejected any portrayal of Pretti as an innocent bystander, accusing him of assaulting federal immigration officers and warning that he posed the kind of threat that law enforcement could not afford to misjudge. Officials argue his decision to confront agents signaled a clear intent to cause serious harm, creating an imminent danger that justified lethal force. In their account, Pretti was not a victim of chaos, but an aggressor, one they say fit an increasingly familiar pattern of extremist hostility toward federal law enforcement.
"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," Walz said, Democrat politicians and their radical supporters will do everything they can to interfere with and threaten ICE agents enforcing our immigration laws.
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