WATCH: Rep. Mfume says hatred for immigrants under guise of government 'scares the hell out of me'

Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., evoked the long arc of American history during Thursday’s House Oversight Committee’s hearing with Democratic governors, who were questioned about "sanctuary" policies as President Donald Trump doubled down on his militarized response to Los Angeles protests against immigration raids.

Mfume, the former president of the NAACP and a longtime civil rights advocate, said he finds “something eerily chilling” about what he’s observed during and outside the hearing.

“What's chilling about it is that if I take myself out of 2025 and roll myself back in time, some of the hatred that I see displayed under the guise of good government just scares the hell out of me,” he said.

The 76-year-old likened the heightened rhetoric around immigrants today to harmful policies of the past.

The Marylander held up a new sign that says, “Report all foreign invaders,” with a phone number to alert U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Uncle Sam is seen on the sign.

“If we just roll this clock on the wall back 75 years, we'd be looking at a time in Nazi Germany, where people ran around with signs like this,” he said. “This could have been a Gestapo member 75 years ago. ‘Report all Jews.’”

Going further in time, it could have been a plantation owner that said “report all Negroes and all coloreds and all those who are from Africa, because they are disrupting our country,” he added.

“We in this country are not pure and pristine,” he said, noting the decades of codes that incentivized people to report Black neighbors, particularly former slaves, and the long tail of segregation and Jim Crow laws that followed.

“So don't give me something about these people because they're immigrants,” Mfume said, ostensibly reacting to Republicans’ inflammatory remarks about this group of people in the U.S. “No, there's something about them because they're people and like all groups, they've got bad people in them.”

“When future generations peer through the telescope of time, I hope that they look at us and realize that there are some who chose not to shirk their responsibility, not to run away from the reality and to face it head on,” he added.

Evoking the image of the Statue of Liberty, Mfume said that as a nation, “we must never lose sight of the things that make us great, or the things that take away from our greatness.”

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