Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn, a Democrat-endorsed "independent," likened modern immigration enforcement to the Nazi persecution of Jews at an October 2025 town hall, according to audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, a comparison that clashes sharply with his own history of contacting ICE to report illegal immigrants at a Kellogg's factory.
The Washington Free Beacon reported on the recording, in which Osborn told an audience member that the current political climate mirrors 1930s Germany. His words were direct:
"You have to have a common enemy, right? And in the 30s it was the Jews. This, they're using the immigrants."
Osborn went further, arguing that immigrants lack political power and cannot fairly be blamed for the country's problems. "How can nobody sit here and tell me that you can blame all your woes on a group of people that don't have political power?" he said. "They have zero political power."
The comparison is inflammatory on its own terms. Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews. Federal immigration enforcement, whatever one thinks of it, operates under statutory authority, court oversight, and constitutional constraints. Equating the two trivializes one of history's worst atrocities and smears the federal agents who carry out lawful policy. But the comparison becomes more revealing when set against Osborn's own record, because the man now likening ICE to Nazis once sought ICE's help himself.
Before Osborn was a Senate candidate, he was president of Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 50G, the union that led a 77-day strike of 1,400 Kellogg's workers in 2021. During that strike, Kellogg's threatened to bring in replacement workers. Osborn went on a podcast a few weeks before the strike ended in December 2021 and said this:
"Kellogg's bringing in replacement workers, we have it on good authority that they're replacing us with a good percentage of undocumented workers. We have been in contact with Homeland Security and ICE. We've made our claims. I hope they do the right thing and investigate our claims."
He did not compare ICE to the Gestapo then. He asked ICE for help. He wanted federal immigration enforcement to protect his members' jobs. CNN reported in June 2026 that Osborn once boasted of calling ICE to report illegal immigrants working at the Kellogg's factory.
Now his campaign tells a different story. The Osborn campaign says he did not personally contact federal authorities, that other, unidentified individuals made those calls "in their individual capacity." The podcast audio, in which Osborn used the word "we" and spoke as the union's leader, makes that walkback difficult to square.
The Free Beacon noted that Osborn made his 2021 claims about undocumented replacement workers without evidence. Whether the claim was true or not, the point is that Osborn treated ICE as a legitimate tool when it served his interests. He only started comparing the agency to Nazi oppressors after he began courting left-wing voters.
The contradiction runs deeper than one podcast. During both his 2024 and 2026 Senate campaigns, Osborn sided with President Trump on boosting border security, building a wall, and opposing Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants. He ran campaign ads boasting that his support for Trump policies gave him "true independent" credentials in deep-red Nebraska.
At the same time, he told Semafor in September 2024 that he supports "meaningful immigration reform," said "it's time they get into Social Security already," and called for 80,000 open jobs in Nebraska to be filled with "immigrant labor." He also condemned the use of masked ICE agents in Minnesota and sharply criticized the killing of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection agents, though he stopped short of supporting the DHS shutdown that Democrats pushed from February through April as they protested Pretti's death.
Sen. Pete Ricketts, the Republican incumbent Osborn is challenging, accused him in February of "dodging questions and talking out of both sides of his mouth." The unearthed audio gives that accusation concrete evidence. Osborn's public positions on immigration depend entirely on who is in the room.
He told the Nebraska Examiner that ICE "needs to operate under 'common sense.'" He told a town hall audience that ICE operates like Nazis. He told campaign-ad viewers he backs Trump's border wall. He told Semafor he wants immigrant labor filling 80,000 Nebraska jobs. Four audiences, four messages.
The town hall comments surfaced just days after Osborn appeared at an event hosted by Indivisible Nebraska, a chapter of the national group bankrolled by George Soros's philanthropic network. Indivisible is best known for reimbursing activists in 2025 to disrupt town halls held by Republican lawmakers. In January, it launched a nationwide "Eye on ICE" program that claims to have educated 200,000 activists on how to monitor ICE agents.
Osborn barred the press from his Wednesday event with Indivisible Nebraska. The Plains Sentinel reported that roughly 12 to 16 guests attended. For a candidate who markets himself as a straight-talking independent, closed-door sessions with Soros-funded activist groups raise obvious questions about who he is really accountable to.
His political origins raise similar questions. The Wall Street Journal reported that Osborn was recruited for his first Senate run in 2024 by operatives including Daniel Moraff, a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America who has described himself as "a man who longs for socialist governors." Moraff later served as top strategist for Graham Platner's scandal-plagued Maine Senate campaign. Platner formally ended that campaign in July with a letter that closed with "F*** ICE. Free Palestine."
Morris Katz, another operative long associated with Osborn, serves as a key strategist for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Free Beacon reported that Moraff and Katz "discovered, recruited, and stood by Graham Platner until the end." The network connecting Osborn to DSA alumni, Soros-funded groups, and candidates who sign off with profane anti-ICE slogans is not the résumé of a Nebraska independent. It is the résumé of a progressive candidate wearing centrist camouflage.
Comparing political opponents to Nazis is not new in American politics. When Britain's Prince Charles reportedly compared Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea to Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland, Russia's Foreign Ministry called the remarks "unacceptable, outrageous and base" and demanded an official explanation from Britain. Even in the context of an actual military invasion, the Hitler analogy drew sharp backlash.
Osborn was not describing a foreign military annexation. He was describing American federal agents enforcing American immigration law, a function authorized by Congress, funded by taxpayers, and overseen by courts. To compare that work to the systematic persecution and eventual extermination of European Jews is reckless. It insults the memory of Holocaust victims, and it slanders the men and women who enforce the border.
The Osborn campaign did not return the Free Beacon's request for comment on the Nazi Germany comparison.
Nebraska earned its endorsement from the state Democratic Party after the winner of the Democratic primary withdrew. Osborn accepted the backing. He runs campaign ads praising Trump's border wall. He holds closed-door events with Soros-funded anti-ICE activists. He once called ICE himself, then denied it. And in a room he thought was private, he compared immigration enforcement to the Third Reich.
Voters in deep-red Nebraska deserve to know which Dan Osborn would show up in Washington, the one in the campaign ads or the one on the audio recording. Based on the evidence, there is no reason to believe even Osborn knows the answer.
