One of Connecticut’s U.S. senators is comparing his family’s personal experience in Nazi-era Europe to recent actions taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal says ICE tactics in Minnesota since the killing of Renee Good hit too close to home.
“My father escaped Germany in 1935 and came to America after seeing what was to come in those same Gestapo-type tactics in Germany,” Blumenthal said on Wednesday.
Blumenthal described what his Jewish father may have experienced if he continued to live under the Nazi regime: “He would have seen paramilitary force going door to door, rounding up people just like him — exactly the kinds of tactics we now see unfolding. ICE, as a paramilitary force … seizing people, dragging them out of their cars or homes."
His remarks came the same week a New Haven-based faith leader drew comparisons between ICE and the Ku Klux Klan.
Blumenthal also said ICE has been acting without cause, basing detainments on people’s skin color, language or place of work.
Blumenthal is the Democratic Party’s ranking member in the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He pointed to their recent report detailing firsthand accounts with ICE from 22 people.
“United States citizens in 10 different states, who were physically assaulted, pepper sprayed, denied medical treatment, detained sometimes for days by federal immigration agents,” he described.
The report was released before Good’s killing and before a suspected federal employee pepper sprayed several people at a protest in Hartford.
Blumenthal said investigations will continue in the subcommittee.
“We will press for accountability,” he said. “We will press for the facts, the truth.”
