During Tuesday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Rogan claimed that “after that woman was shot, unfortunately — everything’s unfortunate about it — but one of the real problems is, now ICE are villains.”
As reported by Breitbart, Rogan pressed the comparison further, asking, “Are we really going to be the Gestapo?” and demanding, “‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?”
Rogan argued that the shooting has turned ICE agents into public enemies in the eyes of many on the left, saying, “Now people are looking at them like murderers, military people that are on the streets of our city.” He also complained about agents concealing their identities, adding, “And they’re masked up, which is also a problem, because if you get arrested by a cop, you’re allowed to ask the cop, ‘What is your name and badge number?’”
By contrast, Rogan claimed, ICE officers operate with fewer transparency requirements, insisting, “If you get arrested by an ICE agent, you have no such right. They’re wearing a mask,” he continued. “They don’t have to tell you shit — that’s a problem on our city streets, right? Because you could also pretend to be an ICE agent.”
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To bolster his argument, Rogan cited a 2024 crime in Coon Rapids, Minnesota, in which a former UPS employee allegedly used a company uniform to gain access to a home where three people were killed. “If you could pretend to be a UPS driver, for sure, you could pretend to be an ICE agent, especially since they’re completely anonymous,” he surmised.
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“It’s not like it’s impossible to fake their logo, right?” Rogan added. “It’s pretty easy. It just says ‘ICE,’ you know? How hard is that? You could easily imagine armed gangs pretending to be ICE agents, robbing people.” Yet Rogan’s leap from a single UPS-related atrocity to a hypothetical wave of ICE impersonators is a textbook anecdotal fallacy, substituting a lurid story for any evidence of a real trend.
Conservatives have long warned that such rhetoric blurs the line between legitimate law enforcement and criminality, undermining public trust in agencies tasked with securing the border and enforcing immigration law. While an anecdote can illustrate a concern, it does not prove one, and by Rogan’s logic, the far more common problem of police impersonators would justify similar alarmism about local law enforcement officers who also wear badges and marked vests.
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Indeed, there were multiple arrests for police impersonation in 2025 alone, despite such cases remaining relatively rare.
Rogan’s assertion that it is “pretty easy” to fake an ICE logo is a non sequitur that does nothing to invalidate the agency’s mission or make its agents uniquely “anonymous” compared with other uniformed authorities, all of whom face some risk of being mimicked by criminals.
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Sen. Paul pushed back gently, drawing a distinction between operational needs at the border and in American cities.
“I think you could make an argument, when you’re working right along the border or at night with large groups, that there’s a lawlessness to the cartels that hiding the identities of ICE along the border,” he said.
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The Kentucky Republican then noted that the same justification is weaker away from the front lines of cartel activity.
The senator went on to suggest, “It’s a little harder to make the argument” when ICE agents are not working along the U.S. border.
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Rogan, for his part, described the shooting of Good in graphic terms, emphasizing the disturbing nature of the video while acknowledging that the agent had been in danger. “It’s complicated, obviously, but it’s also very ugly to watch someone shoot a U.S. citizen — especially a woman — in the face,” he said, adding that while the ICE agent “had almost been run over,” the incident “just looked horrific to me.”
He nevertheless conceded that Good’s behavior appeared erratic and extreme, undercutting the narrative of an innocent bystander gunned down without cause. The podcast host admitted that Good “seemed like she was out of her fucking mind,” and asked, “That lady seemed crazy, and didn’t she move there specifically to get involved in all this?”
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“She didn’t seem mentally healthy, but does that mean she should be shot in the head?” Rogan continued, framing the case as a moral dilemma rather than a straightforward act of self-defense by a federal officer. He also said he can “see the point of view of the people who say, ‘You don’t want militarized people in the streets, just roaming around, snatching people up,’” before again returning to the Gestapo comparison that has become a favorite trope of the progressive left.
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“Are we really going to be the Gestapo? ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” Rogan inquired, echoing a narrative that paints immigration enforcement as inherently authoritarian.
Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz has pushed a similar line, smearing ICE agents as “Trump’s Modern Gestapo,” a phrase that not only trivializes the horrors of actual Nazi secret police but also demonizes Americans charged with upholding federal law.
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For conservatives, such rhetoric is not merely hyperbolic but dangerous, as it invites hostility toward law enforcement officers and erodes respect for the rule of law in the name of ideological outrage.
The debate Rogan reignited with his remarks raises a deeper question: whether the country will stand with those enforcing democratically enacted immigration laws, or continue normalizing comparisons that equate federal agents with one of history’s most murderous regimes.
