On a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring guest Joe Eszterhas, Joe Rogan raised concerns about ICE enforcement operations and what he sees as a potentially dangerous precedent for law enforcement in the United States.
“The ICE area, it bothers me,” Eszterhas said, introducing his concern about how immigration enforcement is being conducted.
Rogan then replied by expanding on the broader issue of militarized policing on city streets.
“What bothers me is we’re opening the door for militarized police on our city streets,” he said. “As many people say, we’ve got to get these immigrants out of here that are illegal. There’s a lot of crimi nals in this country, there’s a lot of people that are committing cri mes. I understand that perspective.”
He continued, “My perspective is not that you need to get the crimi nals out. It’s that it is a very slippery slope when you give people who are trained for seven weeks, much less time than police officers, much less time than military.”
Rogan also raised concerns about identification and accountability during such operations: “You have this militarized police force that has no identification and they’re on the streets,” he said.
“That’s a precedent that you might like when it’s for a cause that you support, but that could easily be for a cause that you do not support,” he noted. “That militarized police force could be going door-to-door and confiscating g*ns. A different ruler could use this precedent in a very damaging way for our free society.”
He then shifted to the human impact of enforcement actions on immigrants. “Imagine if you’re living in Guatemala and you’re encouraged to come to America,” he said.
“You live in a terrible third world situation. You’re told that they’ll help you get across the border. They’ll literally transport you into America. They’ll put you in these cities and you can get on public assistance. The Red Cross is giving you maps,” he said.
He stated, “People are showing you how to do it. They’re letting you across the border. And then two years later, you’re being chased down. You’ve got masked ICE workers pulling people. It’s very inconsistent.”
He added a further point about expectations and fairness.
“I feel for those poor people that were told they can come here and that there was going to be a pathway to citizenship,” he said. “So they upend their life. They come to America in the only way they know how… If you don’t have any money and you’re living in a third world country and people encourage you to come to America, I most certainly would have come to America just like they did.”
Finally, Rogan warned about the long-term implications of normalizing such enforcement practices.
“I just worry that people accept it because they want this result now and they don’t realize that this could set up this being a common occurrence,” he said. “That scares me when you have a justification for militarized police with masks on that are just grabbing people. And some of these people are American citizens. It turned out a lot of them were American.”
