Dan Osborn, the Democrat-endorsed “independent” Nebraska Senate candidate, compared modern immigration enforcement to Nazi Germany during an October 2025 town hall event, according to audio footage obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Osborn, who presents himself as an independent yet is endorsed by the Nebraska Democratic Party, said during the event that the treatment of illegal immigrants in America today is no different than the persecution of German Jews in the 1930s, who the Nazi regime accused of being the root cause of society’s problems at the time. “You have to have a common enemy, right?” Osborn told an audience member during the town hall. “And in the 30s it was the Jews. This, they’re using the immigrants.”
“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?” Osborn added. “They have zero political power.”
Osborn may be running as an independent, but he’s effectively the Democratic nominee in deep-red Nebraska after the winner of the Democratic primary withdrew and Nebraska’s Democratic Party endorsed him. In his past races, Osborn has significantly out-performed Democrats on the ticket, and he’s considered a viable challenger to the GOP incumbent, Pete Ricketts.
Osborn’s comments on ICE and Nazis, first reported here by the Free Beacon, reflect the left’s most incendiary anti-ICE rhetoric and pose a stark contrast with the centrist position on immigration enforcement he’s straddled on the campaign trail as he seeks to appeal to the center in deep-red Nebraska. Osborn has sought for years to portray himself as tough on immigration, even bragging in 2021 that he called ICE to report illegal immigrants he suspected of working at a Kellogg’s plant.
During his 2024 and 2026 campaigns, Osborn has sided with President Donald Trump on boosting border security, building a wall, and opposing “social security to illegals,” policies that appeal to the overwhelming majority of Republicans that view ICE favorably. Osborn boasted in campaign ads that support from those Trump policies gave him “true independent” bona fides.
At other times, though, Osborn has contradicted his hardline immigration positions, sometimes depending on the forum or publication involved. In September 2024, he told Semafor, a liberal publisher and events company, that he supports “meaningful immigration reform,” saying “it’s time they get into Social Security already” and called for 80,000 open jobs in Nebraska to be filled with “immigrant labor.”
His positions have also shifted depending on the political winds. During his 2026 campaign, Osborn has been critical of Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics in Minnesota, condemning the use of masked ICE agents, and sharply criticizing the killing of 37-year-old armed anti-ICE activist Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection agents, policies that appeal to the overwhelming majority of Democrats who oppose ICE. But he stopped short of supporting the Department of Homeland Security shutdown from February through April as Democrats protested the Pretti killing, instead telling the Nebraska Examiner that ICE simply “needs to operate under ‘common sense.'”
His flip-flopping on immigration policy led his Republican opponent, Sen. Pete Ricketts, to accuse Osborn in February of “dodging questions and talking out of both sides of his mouth.”
Osborn’s previously unreported comments during his October 2025 town hall comparing ICE to the Nazis align more with the sort of rhetoric espoused by Ivy League-educated socialist operatives who told the Wall Street Journal they recruited Osborn to launch his first campaign for Senate in 2024. One of those operatives, Daniel Moraff, was once a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who described himself as a “man who longs for socialist governors.” More recently, Moraff served as a top strategist for former scandal-plagued Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who formally ended his campaign in July with a letter that closed with, “F*ck ICE. Free Palestine.”
Osborn also has long been associated with Morris Katz, a key, far-left strategist for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, who, along with Moraff, discovered, recruited, and stood by Graham Platner until the end.
Osborn’s comments are resurfacing just after his appearance with Indivisible’s Nebraska chapter Wednesday evening. Indivisible, a dark money group bankrolled by liberal billionaire George Soros’s philanthropic network best known for reimbursing activists in 2025 to disrupt town halls of Republican lawmakers, launched a nationwide “Eye on ICE” program in January which claims to have educated 200,000 activists on how to monitor the activity of ICE agents.
Osborn barred the press from attending his Wednesday event with Indivisible, according to the Plains Sentinel, which reported that approximately 12 to 16 guests were in attendance.
Osborn’s contradictory stances on immigration could land him in hot water from his left-wing flank in light of a CNN report in June that he once boasted of calling ICE to report illegal immigrants working at a Kellogg’s factory as he led a high-profile labor dispute in 2021.
At the time, Osborn served as president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 50G labor union as it led a strike of 1,400 Kellogg’s workers who walked off the job in protest of low wages and insufficient benefits, CNN reported. Toward the end of the 77-day strike, Kellogg’s threatened to replace the striking workers with replacement employees, which Osborn said, without evidence, would be illegal immigrants.
“Kellogg’s bringing in replacement workers, we have it on good authority that they’re replacing us with a good percentage of undocumented workers,” Osborn said on a podcast a few weeks before the strike ended in December 2021. “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.”
The Osborn campaign now denies that Osborn ever contacted ICE or DHS, telling CNN in a statement that he instead called the local sheriff’s office for guidance on how to report his allegations while other unidentified individuals contacted federal authorities “in their individual capacity.”
The Osborn campaign did not return a request for comment.
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