A Minnesota bookstore owner drew sharp criticism Friday after likening federal immigration detention centers to concentration camps during a live CNN segment, a comparison that trivializes historical atrocities while echoing the lefts most inflammatory rhetoric on border enforcement.
The controversy unfolded on The Lead with Jake Tapper, where Moon Palace Books co-owner Jamie Schwesnedl appeared to explain why several Minnesota businesses had shut their doors in protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, according to the Daily Caller. Tapper, hardly a conservative firebrand, nonetheless balked when Schwesnedl invoked Holocaust-era language to describe modern immigration enforcement, underscoring just how extreme the activists framing had become.
Just one note, Im not here to defend ICE, but Im not a big fan of people using the term concentration camp to describe detention camps. That has a very specific meaning, Tapper told his guest, attempting to inject some historical precision into a debate often driven by emotion and political theater. The hosts pushback highlighted a basic reality: words matter, and equating lawful detention of illegal immigrants with genocidal regimes is not only inaccurate but deeply offensive to the memory of those who suffered under actual concentration camp systems.
Schwesnedl, however, doubled down rather than recalibrate his language. I understand that, but they take people to Fort Snelling here, which literally was built as a concentration camp, and Alligator Alcatraz, which I think we can all agree is a concentration camp. Im not saying theyre Dachau. Im not saying theyre putting people in ovens yet but these are concentration camps. I dont need to argue with you about that, Schwesnedl said, invoking Nazi death camps while insisting on his own definition.
Earlier in the interview, Schwesnedl had already framed ICEs lawful operations in apocalyptic terms. We cant do business as usual right now, anyway, because our city has been invaded by masked gunmen kidnapping family members and friends and neighbors of ours to send them to concentration camps, he told Tapper when asked why his store had closed, language that casts federal agents as foreign occupiers rather than law enforcement officers executing congressionally authorized duties.
He went on to justify the shutdown as an act of political solidarity. Additionally, theres a lot of businesses in our area that have staff or customers or owners who are afraid to come to work, afraid to come in and shop. People are closing down today, and we felt like it wouldnt be kind or fair for us to stay open, so were closing in solidarity to help send a message, Schwesnedl added, aligning his business with a broader progressive protest movement against immigration enforcement.
Historically, the term concentration camp refers to facilities where civilians are confined en masse, often without trial, under brutal conditions and outside normal legal protections, most infamously in Nazi Germanys system that enabled industrial-scale oppression and murder during the Holocaust. By contrast, ICE detention centers are civil immigration custody facilities that hold noncitizens who are unlawfully present or awaiting immigration proceedings or removal, including dedicated ICE sites, county jails, and contracted locations where detainees remain until their cases are adjudicated or they are deported.
The attempt to erase this distinction reflects a broader pattern on the left: weaponizing Holocaust analogies to delegitimize any form of border control, while ignoring that a sovereign nation has both the right and the obligation to enforce its immigration laws. As the immigration debate intensifies ahead of November and President Trumps border policies remain a central political fault line, the clash on Tappers program underscores a key question for voters: whether the United States will continue to treat immigration as a matter of law and national security, or allow activist rhetoric to redefine enforcement itself as a moral crime.
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