Podcaster Joe Rogan argued Thursday that, despite some issues with its tactics, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has to carry out controversial raids because Democrats allowed millions of illegal immigrants into the country for their own political gain.
"If you could sign a piece of paper that said that, ‘We're going to allow a bunch of people into this country, most of them have no violent convictions, but about 8% of them are monsters, evil sociopathic murderers, drug dealers… 8% is a giant-a-- f------ number. That's a giant-a-- number," Rogan said.
"The real problem is that they have to do this," he continued. "This is the real problem, because the Democrats did what they did. They did a crazy thing. They opened the border up and told people the border was open, and then let people [in], and then when people tried to stop them from doing it, they used court orders."
Citing an artificial intelligence analysis showing that 5% to 8% of illegal immigrants caught by ICE had violent or serious property crime convictions, Rogan warned, "I would say 8% is a lot. Like if you have cancer in 8% of your body, I would say you’re f---ed. You know what I’m saying? Like if they’re saying, ‘Oh, it’s only been 8% that are violent criminals,’ it’s a lot. That’s a lot of people.’"
"Like what was that thing they did down in Texas at the border?" Rogan asked regarding Democrats trying to block the state's border security efforts.
"Oh yeah, because [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott tried to put up some like wall or something?" Rogan’s guest, Ehsan Ahmad, replied.
"They said you can't stop this," Rogan said. "Which is — wait a minute — you can't stop people from breaking the law? Like, what are you saying? There's a method to stop this, and you don't want it stopped?"
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Rogan acknowledged that he's recently been critical of ICE tactics but still defended the importance of the agency's work.
"There was like a recent clip of mine that got like highlighted, where I was criticizing ICE," Rogan said. "One of the 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."
"With the ICE thing, what you're only seeing, and you're only hearing about American citizens that have been arrested, the lady that got shot," he continued. "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."
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Rogan also argued Democrats were using mass immigration to help themselves politically.
"Because, the dirty secret is the census doesn't count citizens, it counts everybody. It even counts illegals," he said. "So if you live in a community that's half illegal aliens, you get way more congressional seats from that district than if you are in a community where all those people don't count. You're rigging politics by moving humans into place."
