Ricketts Receives Endorsement of Border Patrol Union, Takes Aim at Osborn Over Nazi Remark
by Matt Johnson
(Picture credit Matt Johnson)
U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts was joined by Paul Perez, president of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), the labor union representing approximately 18,000 Border Patrol agents, for a press conference on Wednesday for the group to announce its endorsement of Ricketts. This is the first time the organization has endorsed a candidate in a Nebraska race, and Perez had high praise for Ricketts.
“Every state is a border state. Nebraska is no different. So what we wanna see is somebody like Senator Pete Ricketts come in, continue doing the great job he’s doing,” Perez said. “He’s been a friend of law enforcement. He’s funded us. He’s given us more money than we’ve ever had in the history of our agency, and that has allowed us to get more agents out in the field.”
“When I went to the Senate, I wanted to make sure that Paul and his colleagues had the support they needed to secure our border,” Ricketts said. “And so when the Democrats were trying to defund our Customs and Border Protection folks, I fought on the floor of the U.S. Senate to make sure they would get the funding they need to be able to help secure our border.”
Differences in Immigration Enforcement Between Trump and Biden
Perez has served in the Border Patrol since 1997 across numerous presidential administrations—both Republican and Democrat. The Plains Sentinel asked what difference he has noticed between the two major political parties in recent years.
“President Trump is the only president that actually put these policies into place to turn the magnets off, to keep people from coming into this country. Detention was one of the main things.”
Perez explained that the “magnets” refer to enticements like the chance to receive amnesty or documentation to stay indefinitely in the United States, which act as a draw for more illegal immigration.
“That’s another ruse for people to come into this country unvetted, just like they did under the Biden administration,” Perez said. “We don’t want that. So anybody that’s advocating for licenses for illegal immigrants, Social Security cards for illegal immigrants, like Dan Osborn is, is just enticing people, inviting people to invade this country.”
Ricketts Slams Osborn Nazi Comment
In October 2025, Dan Osborn held a town hall in Schuyler, Nebraska, on Oct. 14, 2025, a town where roughly three-quarters of residents are Hispanic and nearly half are foreign-born. Last week, the Washington Free Beacon shared leaked audio from the town hall in which Osborn compared the focus on illegal immigration to the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
“This is a playbook, and it’s being followed. And Pete Ricketts is rubber stamping it,” Osborn said. “You have to have a common enemy, right? In the ‘30s, Poland and Germany, it was the Jews. This? They’re using the immigrants.”
During the press conference, Ricketts responded to the remarks.
“That’s an insult to all the brave women and men who put on this uniform to keep us safe down at the southern border,” Ricketts said. “They are putting their lives on the line to keep us safe, and he’s comparing enforcing our laws to Nazi Germany.”
Defunding ICE?
Last week, Osborn met with Indivisible Nebraska, an organization that has promoted defunding ICE and the “ICE Out for Good” campaign.
“Perhaps you think that prior to ICE existing we just didn’t have borders,” the group posted on its Twitter account. “That’s actually not the case, we just didn’t militarize the agency responsible for investigating a civil process.”
The Plains Sentinel asked Perez what this would look like for average Americans.
“Chaos,” Perez said. “We’ve experimented with that under the Biden administration—unwillingly of course. We had 10% of our agents or less actually patrolling and doing the job, where we had 90% dealing with the influx. So if you’ve got people that want to defund ICE, defund the Border Patrol, that’s only going to encourage another invasion.”
Ricketts and Osborn will face off in a debate on Sept. 1 at the BigIron Events Center at the Nebraska State Fairgrounds in Grand Island, Nebraska. Topics like illegal immigration will likely be discussed there and continue to dominate the conversation ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3.
— Matt Johnson is a freelance reporter with The Plains Sentinel.