Walz Calls ICE “Trump’s Modern-Day Gestapo” at UMN Commencement; South Africa Official: “Land Must Be Expropriated Without Compensation”; Chicago Mayor Johnson: Black Prime Contractor at O’Hare

Three stories converged in May 2025, all touching the question of race and state power. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz compared ICE enforcement to Nazi Germany during a University of Minnesota commencement speech: “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets. They’re in unmarked vans wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons.” A South African official declared the continent’s land belongs only to Black Africans: “Africa belongs to the Bantu people, the Ngunis. The land must be expropriated without compensation.” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced “the first Black prime construction company to have a prime contract anywhere in the United States of America” for O’Hare Airport work. Separately, Vice President JD Vance met with Italian PM Giorgia Meloni and Pope Leo XIV in Rome.

Walz: “Trump’s Modern-Day Gestapo”

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, made the controversial analogy during a University of Minnesota commencement speech.

“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Walz said.

He described the enforcement methods: “They’re in unmarked vans wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons.”

He described the claimed procedural deficits: “No chance to mount a defense, not even a chance to kiss the loved one goodbye, just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans and disappeared.”

He expressed skepticism of criminal claims: “To be clear, there’s no way for us to know whether they were actually criminals or not, because they refused to give them a trial. We’re supposed to just take their word for it.”

He referenced the Newark Delaney Hall incident: “And when newly elected members of Congress tried to exercise their constitutional right of oversight at an ICE facility, they get shoved around and threatened with arrest.”

He accused the administration of defying courts: “And when courts told them repeatedly to knock it off, they brazenly defy them.”

The “Gestapo” comparison was extreme and historically fraught. The Gestapo was the secret state police of Nazi Germany, which had arrested Jews, political dissidents, and others for transport to concentration camps where millions were murdered. The organization was directly responsible for implementing the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities. Comparing any contemporary American law enforcement agency to the Gestapo trivializes the specific horrors of the Nazi regime.

The factual accuracy of Walz’s specific claims was contestable:

• ICE enforcement did involve some unmarked vehicles and tactical equipment, but this was standard federal law enforcement practice
• Deportations were conducted under statutory authority after procedural due process, not “without trial”
• The “foreign torture dungeons” claim presumably referred to CECOT in El Salvador, which was a high-security prison rather than a torture facility
• The Delaney Hall incident had shown Democratic representatives physically confronting ICE officers, as documented in body camera footage

The “snitch line” critique that accompanied broader commentary on Walz was historically accurate. During COVID, Walz’s administration had operated a hotline for Minnesotans to report neighbors violating COVID restrictions. That a governor who had encouraged reporting on neighbors was now using Nazi-era police comparisons generated its own contradictions.

South Africa: “Land Belongs to the Bantu People”

The South African segment featured an exchange between a journalist and what appeared to be an EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) or similar radical party representative.

The journalist posed a historical challenge: “And so deep into history, you’ve taken us back to the 17th century. In that case, shouldn’t everybody leave the property to the Khoisan who are thought to be the native occupants of South Africa?”

The response was direct: “No, actually, Africa and South Africa, it belongs to the Bantu people. It belongs to the Ngunis. So it belongs to the people of Africa.”

On the presence of other groups: “What about Tevi here? We are not saying it doesn’t belong here. Now that we are living together here, our perspective is that the land must go back to the chiefs, the traditional leaders, and the state.”

He closed with the explicit policy: “We’re unapologetic about this. Land must be expropriated without compensation.”

The Bantu/Khoisan distinction was historically significant and politically inconvenient for the radical land expropriation argument. The Khoisan peoples — including the San and Khoikhoi — were the original indigenous peoples of Southern Africa, having inhabited the region for tens of thousands of years before Bantu migration. The Bantu peoples themselves had arrived in Southern Africa relatively recently (by historical standards) through migration from further north in Africa, reaching the region over the past 2,000 years.

If the principle of land ownership was “original inhabitants,” then logically the land would belong to the Khoisan, not the Bantu. The Bantu had displaced the Khoisan through similar processes of migration, war, and resource competition to how European settlers had later displaced Bantu peoples from some regions.

The speaker’s rejection of the Khoisan claim — “No, actually, Africa and South Africa belongs to the Bantu people” — revealed that the underlying framework was not really about original occupation but rather about racial claim to territory. Black Africans (of Bantu ancestry) were the true owners; everyone else (Khoisan, European, Indian, etc.) had no legitimate claim.

This was the precise claim the Trump administration had cited as justification for the Afrikaner refugee program. If the governing ideology in South Africa was that land should be expropriated from non-Bantu people without compensation, then white Afrikaners faced systematic dispossession that could reasonably be called persecution.

The “South Africa is about to starve” commentary accompanying this footage referenced the food security implications. South African agriculture was disproportionately operated by white farmers, particularly in commercial large-scale production. Large-scale land expropriation from white farmers without compensation would likely produce agricultural collapse similar to what had occurred in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe’s farm seizures in the 2000s. Zimbabwe had transformed from a net food exporter to a net food importer and had experienced widespread hunger.

Chicago: Black Prime Contractor at O’Hare

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s comments about airport contracting extended his racial hiring framework to city contracting.

“Prime Construction Contract at O’Hare under my administration is the first Black prime construction company to have a prime contract anywhere in the United States of America,” Johnson said.

He described the broader benefit: “And that’s critical not just for Boa Construction, but for the lives that he’s going to transform because he’s hiring them.”

He described the signaling effect: “But it’s also critical for other major construction companies or mid-sized construction companies that are Black owned to know that there is a mayor who sees them and is going to work hard to ensure that whether you’re developing homes, whether you are looking to help take advantage of the opportunities through aviation, whether it’s entrepreneurship to provide a service, that there are resources available for you in the city of Chicago.”

He closed with the reparations-adjacent commitment: “And one thing that I know for sure that I have to do over these next two years, every single dime that our people have been robbed of, I want to make sure that that is returned two, three-fold.”

The legal concerns with race-based municipal contracting were well-established. The Supreme Court had addressed affirmative action in government contracting in Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989), striking down a Richmond set-aside program that had reserved 30% of construction contracts for minority-owned firms. The decision had held that race-based classifications in government contracting required strict scrutiny — the highest constitutional standard — and required a demonstrated compelling interest with narrowly tailored means.

Johnson’s open statement that he was directing contracts based on race — combined with his commitment to ensure “every single dime… returned two, three-fold” to “our people” — created obvious legal vulnerability. The 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision had further constrained race-based considerations in government decision-making. Race-based municipal contracting practices would likely face successful legal challenges.

The “two, three-fold” return commitment also raised ethical questions. Even accepting that historical discrimination had harmed Black Chicagoans, Johnson was committing to multiples of “what was robbed” — implying that taxpayer funds would be used for racial redistribution beyond compensation for specific documented harms. This was closer to a reparations program implemented at municipal level than a remedy for particular discriminatory practices.

JD Vance Meetings in Rome

The broadcast included brief footage of Vice President JD Vance’s meetings in Rome.

Vance had met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The Meloni-Vance relationship had been one of the warmer bilateral relationships in the Trump administration’s European diplomacy. Meloni, as a conservative nationalist prime minister leading a major European Union nation, had natural affinity with the Trump administration’s worldview. The two had coordinated on migration policy, relations with China, and support for Ukraine.

Vance had also met with Pope Leo XIV. The meeting was significant as Leo XIV’s first high-level American engagement following his election in April 2025. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, was the most senior American Catholic official. The Vance-Leo meeting signaled both the Vatican’s interest in maintaining relations with the Trump administration and Vance’s role in American Catholic political engagement.

The “Trump’s people never stop” framing captured the continuous diplomatic activity across multiple theaters. While Trump was completing his Middle East trip, Vance was handling European diplomacy. While Rubio was working on Russia-Ukraine peace efforts, Bessent was conducting trade negotiations with China. The administration had been running multiple major diplomatic tracks simultaneously, in contrast to the more sequential approach of previous administrations.

Key Takeaways

• Walz at UMN: “Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets — unmarked vans, masked agents, foreign torture dungeons.”
• South African official: “Africa belongs to the Bantu people, the Ngunis. Land must be expropriated without compensation.”
• Khoisan historical inversion: If “original inhabitants” was the standard, land would belong to Khoisan, not Bantu — exposing racial rather than indigeneity basis.
• Chicago’s Johnson: First Black prime contractor at O’Hare; “Every dime our people have been robbed of, I want returned two, three-fold.”
• VP Vance in Rome: meetings with PM Meloni and Pope Leo XIV continuing parallel diplomatic tracks.