Joe Rogan Defends ICE — Days After He Went Viral Criticizing Them

Joe Rogan came to the defense of ICE agents days after his comments critical of the agency and its tactics was “highlighted” by media outlets and on social media.

On Thursday’s The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster argued that the public is only shown the “most extreme negatives” when it comes to ICE agents. The comment follows an ICE agent shooting and killing 37-year-old Minneapolis mother Renee Good.

“Imagine you’re one of those people, like, dude, they’re asking me to come, this is awesome, now I’m in America, I’m gonna get a good job, I’m going to be able to support my family, and then all of a sudden you have these f**king dudes in bulletproof vests looking for you on the streets. Like, I thought you said it was okay, I thought the Red Cross gave me a map! I was, you gave me the f**king cell phone, and now you’re hunting me. But now imagine the ICE agents, okay?” Rogan said.

He continued by acknowledging his own criticism of ICE while saying most interactions with citizens are likely non-eventful, like police.

Rogan said:

It was like a recent clip of mine that got like highlighted where I was criticizing ICE. One of things that you don’t think about when you’re into this is just like regular police interactions, the ones that you see online are the horrible ones so you think all cops are horrible. What you miss is the millions of interactions that people have with cops like, how you doing today sir? Good sir? How you doing? Can I see paperwork? Sure. Here it is. You in a hurry? I f**ked up. I’m late for work. You know, alright man. Just slow down. Go. Like, alright, thanks brother. Everything’s nice. That happens too. Like, there’s nice interactions with cops, there are people that save people from bad guys. It happens all the time. There’s people that are thankful that they called the police and they stopped the burglar who was breaking into their f**king mom’s house or whatever it is. There’s so many more of those, but you’re not seeing those videos.

Rogan added that coverage of ICE focuses on wrongful detentions and Good’s death more than the thousands of violent criminals that agents are arresting.

“With the ICE thing, what you’re only seeing and you’re hearing about — American citizens that have been arrested, the lady that got shot, you’re seeing all these negative. What you’re not hearing about is the number of violent criminals that they’ve caught. And it’s a lot. It’s in the thousands,” Rogan said.

Rogan supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, but he’s been critical of ICE’s tactics, arguing they should solely be focused on illegal immigrants guilty of serious crimes beyond just being in the country illegally.

In an episode of his podcast last week with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rogan acknowledged how people could view ICE as comparable to the Gestapo. He also said the shooting of Good “looked horrific.”

“You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people — many of which turn out to be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them. Are we really gonna be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” he said.

Watch above via The Joe Rogan Experience.

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