WASHINGTON, JAN 17: US immigration agents now remind many Americans of the Gestapo — and not just the left-wing activists who have taken to the streets to protest violent raids commanded by President Donald Trump.
Avid Trump supporter and podcaster Joe Rogan, whose massive audience heard him repeat Republican talking points in the run-up to the 2024 election, fueled debate this week by airing those concerns.
“Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” Rogan asked millions of listeners.
“You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people — many of which turn out to be US citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,” he said.
A growing number of Americans agree with that sentiment.
In every national poll, a majority condemns the actions of the immigration officer who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis on January 7.
A Quinnipiac survey found that 57 percent of voters condemn ICE’s methods, with 94 percent of Democratic voters and 64 percent of independents against Republicans, by contrast, support them at 84 percent.
Another poll from Economist/YouGov found that, for the first time, 46 percent of respondents support abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), exceeding the 43 percent who oppose getting rid of it.
– ‘Swing voter’ –
“The most useful way to think about Joe Rogan is as America’s most famous swing voter,” left-wing commentator Ben Burgis posted on X this week.
Rogan wasn’t the pliant conservative megaphone White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt may have had in mind when she reaffirmed the Trump administration’s hard line of the ICE officer’s innocence.
ICE agents “are simply trying to enforce the law and the Democratic Party has demeaned these individuals,” Leavitt told reporters Thursday.
“They’ve even referred to them as Nazis and as the Gestapo, and that is absolutely leading to the violence we’re seeing in the streets,” she added.
Beyond differences on policy or polemics, the methods used by the masked and sometimes heavily armed federal agents run counter to deeply rooted principles within American political and legal culture, Steven Schwinn, a law professor at University of Illinois, Chicago, told AFP.
During chaotic raids in Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis — all Democratic strongholds across the country — Schwinn points to the identity checks and stops that have outraged Rogan, because such stops were only authorized with “reasonable suspicion,” a standard used by law enforcement to stop people in the United States.
