

Comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, calling them “insane” and decrying the targeting of everyday workers rather than violent criminals. Rogan, who endorsed Trump in the 2024 election, made the remarks during Wednesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” where he interviewed software engineer Amjad Masad.
“We were told there would be no—well, there’s two things that are insane,” Rogan said. “One is the targeting of migrant workers. Not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up on construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?” He added that surprise Home Depot-style raids on nonviolent immigrants would have been a hard sell to voters.
The pair also discussed the case of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish student visa holder at Tufts University detained in March after co-authoring an op-ed critical of Israel. Ozturk spent six weeks in a Louisiana immigration detention center before her release in May. “What was her essay about? It was just critical of Israel, right?” Rogan asked. “And that’s enough to get you kicked out of the country,” he concluded.
Rogan previously condemned the ICE operations as “fucking nuts” on his June 18 podcast, questioning whether Trump’s base would have supported mass workplace raids. “If they said, ‘We’re going to go to Home Depot and arrest all the people there,’ I don’t think anybody would’ve signed up for that,” he said, noting that initial campaign promises focused on deporting violent offenders, not ordinary workers.
