Readers Write: Trampling of immigrants’ rights, ICE actions being compared to the Holocaust

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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It is beyond appalling; it is criminal what our federal government did to Sebastian (“ICE took Minnesota teen, hid him from family,” Feb. 24).

Let’s just unpack what Immigration and Customs Enforcement and our federal government did to this 16-year-old, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador. Based on reporting in the Star Tribune, in January in Minnesota, ICE kidnapped him and held him against his will. Agents transferred him to multiple places, including a hotel. Kept him in a secret location. Did not allow his family to know where he was. Changed his personal identification information so he was untraceable through previous asylum documentation. Identified him as an unaccompanied minor, when he actually had family here. Eventually took him out of state and placed him in a so-called Christian placement facility.

Sebastian’s family was able to rescue him, only after hiring an attorney and investigators who were able to trace phone calls Sebastian made from this secret location to his father. What is going on with our federal government? How can anyone accept this behavior? How many other young people have experienced this same illegal, unethical, immoral and criminal behavior?

Thankfully, Sebastian made it back to his family, but how many others are still being held by ICE and not allowed their constitutional rights?

Karen Evans, St. Augusta, Minn.

In a recent interview of a Hispanic pastor on NPR, the person interviewed essentially said that he voted for President Donald Trump because he wanted a strong leader. He also expressed support for the president’s promise of law and order while on the campaign trail. He now expressed some surprise and sadness that current ICE and Border Patrol tactics have impacted more than the promised “worst of the worst.” The interview reminded me of a couple of articles in the Star Tribune on Feb. 22, one by Kyndell Harkness (“You can’t be a Black journalist and not reflect on the road that brought us to 2026,” Strib Voices) and the other by Myron Medcalf (“The Black history many Minnesotans can’t bear to see”). The two columnists pointed out in different ways that I don’t often pay enough attention to the policies, struggles or challenges others face until they somehow directly impact me or those I love or care about.

Wanting a strong president sounds good until the reality settles in that is really an insecure, not strong, man who needs Cabinet members to spend valuable time praising him in order to stroke his fragile ego. Who can argue with wanting a president who stands for law and order, until he repeatedly rants and verbally assaults judges who rule against him and his administration ignores court orders and the constitutional rights of those within our borders? Who wouldn’t want the “worst of the worst” to be removed by ICE? But we are learning that only a small percentage of those detained have violent criminal histories and most others are highly productive individuals. Don’t we all want a president who can get things done? Of course we do, until we hear him say in an interview in August 2025 that “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States.” To prove his point he has decided where previously approved congressional funding goes or doesn’t go. When he was asked why he doesn’t just work with Congress on tariffs, since his party controls both chambers, he says, “I don’t have to.” He now wants the Senate to pass the SAVE Act this week, already approved by the House, that will make it harder for many citizens to vote so that “For 50 years, [Republicans] won’t lose a race.”

Many individuals and families are already paying the price when we vote for only our own narrow self-interest. Unless things change because citizens are more willing to stand up for each other and for our neighbors — as many Minnesotans have done in recent months in response to the ICE and Border Patrol surge — it will only be a matter of time before even more of us, and those we love, will pay a much greater price, too.

Jerry Friest, Eagan

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ICE is the danger, not our neighbors. On Jan. 14, Ward 5 neighbors stood together demanding ICE leave after they shot a man in our community. When ICE shot a Ward 5 resident in his home, they were not keeping us safe. They certainly were not keeping the children who lived in that home safe. When ICE tear-gassed a Ward 5 family in their car, they were not keeping us safe. They certainly were not keeping the infant safe in that car. ICE responded to the protest by shooting us with pepper balls and gassing us. They were not thinking of the safety of the children who go to school around the corner.

Our neighbors are not fictional. Our neighbors are not monsters. Our neighbors are kids and moms. Our neighbors come from across the country and across the globe.

Warren’s dehumanizing language is endangering her constituents. Rather than uniting against a federal assault on our constitutional rights, Warren is dividing us by saying some deserve safety and some do not. We are only safe when we are all safe. We only have rights when we all have rights. We all want to raise our families in peace and to stand without fear against our own government.

Council Member Warren, your neighbors need you to say, “Abolish ICE.”

Solomon Steen, Minneapolis

Regarding “The Holocaust is not your metaphor” by Elliot Jaffee and Bill Jaffee (Strib Voices, Feb. 23): The Holocaust did not begin on Jan. 20, 1942, when the Nazi Reich coordinated the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”: the extermination of all Jews throughout Europe.

The Holocaust did not begin on Nov. 9-10, 1938, Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when the Nazi Reich sanctioned its paramilitary SA, extrajudicial SS and civilian supporters to target Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses in order to humiliate, assault and kill Jews.

The Holocaust began on Jan. 30, 1933, when the Nazi Reich effected the transformation of a nation from a democracy to a dictatorship, and, by the time of Kristallnacht, forced over 400 restrictions on the private and public lives of Jews. Long before Jews were killed in death camps, they were detained, arrested and imprisoned in concentration and labor camps.

Between 1933 and 1945, 200,000 Jews were legally admitted to the U.S. and 6 million Jews were murdered under the Nazi Reich. If you were a Jew, or not, what would you have done?

And now, whether or not your neighbor has arrived legally, what will you do if they are denied due process, humiliated, assaulted, killed? And how long will you wait?

John Mattes, Plymouth

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First I wish to humbly agree with the Jaffees that what Immigration and Customs Enforcement has done in Minnesota and nationwide does not compare to the horrors and crimes committed by the German government between 1941 and 1945. I honor those who died and the survivors.

The “comparison” of the Holocaust to ICE focuses on the years 1933 to 1939.

What we fear from ICE is what history tells us happened in those years: harassment, stripping of rights, beatings, disappearances and by eventually the barbed wire of the concentration camps. We seem to have seen versions of them in the last four months.

Our immigration system for persecuted and fleeing refugees was broken then, and it is broken now.

Like a Minnesotan touching the brakes of the car when they sense ice ahead, I ask our state and federal legislatures to take action on ICE and our immigration laws now. If ignored, it will get worse.