Mayor Lucas Subtly Compares ICE to Nazis on CNN

Comments came over possible ICE detention center in south KC

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lucas ice — Lucas on CNN. Image: CNN video.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is stepping up his opposition to a possible Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility on the city’s south side, denouncing the proposal as “fundamentally un-American” during a recent interview with CNN.

In early January, news reports stated that ICE officials had toured a warehouse, originally built for Amazon near the former Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base was being considered for temporary housing of illegal immigrants until their court dates or removal.

Appearing on “CNN This Morning with Audie Cornish,” Lucas opposed the idea and used controversial language to describe the facility. “We are fundamentally opposed,” he said, describing the plan as placing “5,000 to 10,000 humans” in an industrial setting. He also criticized the warehouse’s proximity to the railroad: “I don’t like big encampments next to train tracks and all of that. I think that is terribly un-American.”

While his comments have struck a chord with anti-ICE protesters, the imagery he invoked has raised quiet concerns among others.

Many critics say comments like Lucas’s reference to “big encampments next to train tracks” purposely echo the historic facts surrounding Nazi concentration camps, where railroads delivered millions of victims to torture and death by gas chamber or firing squads. Holocaust historians and organizations fighting antisemitism warn that such language, even when subtle, minimizes the singular horror of the Holocaust in human history.

The Anti-Defamation League regularly cautions political leaders against drawing parallels between modern political and news accounts to Nazi-era atrocities. The renowned group previously stated that “glib comparisons to Nazi Germany are offensive and a trivialization of the Holocaust.”

Last week, the U.S. Holocaust Museum strongly condemned Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for comparing the experience of children dealing with the fallout of immigration enforcement and the arrest of their parents, to that of Holocaust victim Anne Frank.

“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 claimed without evidence.

Frank, one of six million Jews murdered by Nazis, is one of the most iconic victims of the Holocaust.

“Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish,” the museum sharply shared on X. “Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”

Walz was apparently referencing a 5-year-old boy whose father fled ICE agents and whose mother refused to take the child into the house. While the photo of the boy went viral, Democrats and some media outlets wrongly reported he was “arrested.” ICE agents took him to a nearby McDonald’s until he could be reunited with his father who requested him.

Lucas’s office has not responded to questions about his phrasing, but his broader message is consistent with past comments in support of Black Lives Matter protests that rocked the nation in 2020.

Today, negotiations over the warehouse’s use by the federal government appear to be moving behind closed doors. Jackson County Legislature Chairman Manny Abarca says local leaders are following the story.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day was observed on Tuesday.

–Metro Voice