Joe Rogan and comedian Theo Von criticized the Department of Homeland Security this week after Von discovered his image and words had been used in a government video promoting mass deportations without his approval.
On the Tuesday, Nov. 18, episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan condemned ICE for its tactics, saying the agency’s raids have even swept up U.S. citizens. “You got ICE raids where they’re taking people who are American citizens and they’re scaring the s— out of everybody,” he told Von, before his guest brought up a DHS video released earlier this year that featured a clip of him, allegedly used without consent.
“It was crazy,” Rogan said. “They didn’t even ask you.”
“Well, it was really scary for me,” replied Von, who hosts the popular podcast This Past Weekend. He said the video came out around the time Charlie Kirk was assassinated, which made him fear for his own safety.
Rogan pointed out that Von had been “joking around” in the original clip, which was recorded more than a year earlier. In the government video — which has since been taken down — Von could be heard saying, “Heard you got deported, dude, bye.” The clip then cut to footage that appeared to show deportations along with statistics on how many people had been removed from the country, according to USA Today.
“I just can’t believe they did that with you, like you were endorsing that,” Rogan said, adding, “Who greenlit that?”
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He continued, “If a company did that you could sue them. Like, if ICE was a private company and that was the people the United States hired to get rid of illegal immigrants and they used you, you could sue them. But the government can just put that up there?”
Von said he hired a lawyer to push for the video’s removal, which took about 48 hours. By that time, he estimated it had already racked up around 30 million views.
When Rogan first saw the video, he recalled thinking, “Oh my god, what the f— are they doing?”
“It’s like, that’s not how you envision the government,” he said, and Von agreed.
“Yeah, they were making like, deportation hype videos with trap beats and s—, and I was like, what are we doing?” Von said. “Everything has turned into like, the WWE. None of it’s real.”
Von added that he received threats and became “paranoid” after the video’s release. When DHS first shared it, he responded on X with a now-deleted Sept. 23 post, writing, according to USA Today: “Yooo DHS i didn’t approve to be used in this. Please take this down and please keep me out of your ‘banger’ deportation videos. When it comes to immigration my thoughts and heart are alot more nuanced than this video allows. Bye!”
Rogan’s latest remarks are part of a broader pattern of criticism he’s directed at the Trump administration’s immigration approach in recent months — despite his endorsement of Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
On an October episode of his show, Rogan said he never imagined he would regularly see such aggressive tactics deployed by DHS. “No one with a heart is going to go along with that. And I did not ever anticipate seeing that on TV on a regular basis,” he said. “I really thought they were just going to go after the criminals. I really thought there was enough gang members and enough people, MS-13 members and whatever they were looking for, that they would just go after those guys.”
Back in August, Rogan also questioned whether DHS had gone too far with its deportation strategy. “It was a visceral reaction that a lot of people had to the idea of people just showing up and pulling people out of schools and pulling people out of Home Depot and pulling people that were just hard-working people. That’s what freaks people out,” he said.
He summed up the public’s expectations this way: “When people thought about ICE, they thought, ‘Great, we’re going to get rid of the gang members,’ they didn’t think, ‘Great, you’re going to get rid of the landscaper.'”
