Late-Night Stoops to Historic New Low

Apparently, encouraging violence is acceptable when there's a laugh track involved.

Saying late-night comedy is no longer funny would be like announcing porcupines don’t make the cuddliest pets or banana peels aren’t a great pick for hiking shoes. What was once a space for equal-opportunity-offending has become little more than a nightly, applause-metered, one-way mugging.

This week, that target was Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents slipping on frozen Minneapolis streets—served up as a feel-good montage by Jimmy Kimmel (“ICE capades, get it?”), complete with bouncy music, an obediently approving audience, and Instagram commenters describing the experience as “so satisfying I need a cigarette.”

Because nothing says moral superiority like guffawing at fellow human beings face-planting while trying to do their jobs.

The word nerd in me did get a chuckle out of this, though.

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here, because the framing has become so warped it now qualifies as a funhouse mirror with a writers’ room.

ICE is in Minneapolis as part of what the Department of Homeland Security describes as its largest immigration operation ever. These agents aren’t there to menace housekeepers, chase drywall installers, or terrorize random gardeners. They’re there to execute warrants, remove criminal offenders, and enforce federal immigration policy—an unglamorous, politically radioactive job that exists only because Congress, at some point, decided laws should be enforced.

You don’t have to love ICE to grasp this. You just have to live in reality.

But reality isn’t trending very well right now.

After the killing of Renee Good during an ICE operation—an incident that is tragic, under investigation, and already being litigated in the court of public outrage—the media response was not sobriety, restraint, or even wait for the facts. It was: send in the clowns slip-and-fall reel.

Kimmel framed the situation in Minneapolis as “very dark stuff” before pivoting smoothly to the “bright spot”: civilians filming ICE agents sliding on frozen sidewalks, struggling with vehicles, or wiping out while exiting a porta-potty. Cue the laughter. Hold up the applause card. Whisper the soft, reassuring message that these people deserve derision—maybe worse—because they wear the wrong jacket.

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BREAKING: Jimmy Kimmel just released this devastating montage of ICE agents failing miserably in the winter weather. This is amazing.

12:07 PM · Jan 13, 2026 · 227K Views

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196 Replies · 1.4K Reposts · 8.64K Likes

This is where the left’s moral posture fully collapses into parody.

For years, we’ve been told that messaging matters. That language can prompt violence. That jokes normalize cruelty. That dehumanization leads to harm. We were scolded for laughing at memes, for liking the wrong tweets, for using the wrong adjectives.

Apparently, all of that concern evaporates the moment the target is someone doing a job you disapprove of.

Now it’s not dehumanization—it’s poetic justice. It’s not incitement—it’s coping through humor. It’s not cruelty—it’s punching Nazis (a category that now includes anyone enforcing the law).

Part of the confusion seems to stem from the idea that ICE materialized fully formed under Trump 1.0, like a hostile IKEA bookshelf assembled by The Donald himself. In actuality, immigration enforcement has been happening under every administration for decades—quietly, boringly, and without a laugh track or hordes of paid protesters. The issue now isn’t the existence or even the actions of ICE. It’s that Trump’s proximity turns routine federal functions into moral emergencies, and as if by magic the same machinery that hummed along unnoticed under Obiden is treated like an unprecedented scandal.

At one point in his monologue, Kimmel held up a shirt reading DONALD J. TRUMP IS GONNA KILL YOU, suggesting it as appropriate attire for ICE agents.

Pause on that.

These are federal officers working in hostile conditions, surrounded by protesters, after one of their own has been involved in a fatal shooting. And the message being floated—on national television—is that they are agents of death who deserve public scorn.

What, exactly, do we think happens next?

We’ve already seen activists block vehicles, threaten agents, interfere with arrests, and physically obstruct operations. In the last week alone, there were ten instances of vehicular assaults on ICE agents. We’ve got TikTokers openly calling for their murder. We’ve watched rhetoric escalate from disagreement to demonization to outright celebration of harm. Where’s the outrage at the actual criminals in this scenario—the ones ICE was dispatched to deal with? How did the people whose job it is to uphold the law become the enemy?

Daily reminder that we share a planet with these people.

The analogy well is bottomless. It would be like yelling at the smoke alarm for warning you your kitchen’s on fire. Like firing the doctor who tells you your appendix is inflamed. Like blaming your speedometer for your speeding ticket. Like deleting the weather app because it showed showers on your birthday.

A particularly telling recent poll found that most Americans—80%—support or strongly support the U.S. government deporting illegal immigrants who have been convicted of a violent crime. That includes more than 90% of Republicans, 81% of independents and 75% of Democrats. Flip those numbers around, and you get this gem: one in four Democrats (and one in ten Republicans!) think violent criminals should freely roam our streets. Preferably with free healthcare, subsidized housing, legal advocacy, a phone, transportation assistance, and a firm assurance that none of this will be available to the taxpayers footing the bill.

The left loves to ask, “Which side of history are you on?” Here’s a better question: Which side of reality are you on? Are you on the side where maintaining public safety—however imperfectly, however messily—is still a legitimate function of government? Or are you on the side where anyone tasked with enforcing laws you dislike becomes fair game for ridicule, harassment, and violence?

Because laughing at ICE agents slipping on ice isn’t just tasteless. It’s instructive. It tells the audience who counts as human, who counts as evil, and who deserves what happens next. “But it’s just a joke,” they’ll say, as if the masses don’t realize that laughter is the safest way to launder hostility.

What’s especially grotesque is the inversion of empathy. The same culture that demands nonstop sensitivity seminars for perceived microaggressions suddenly has no problem turning real people into viral punchlines—people with families, names, and the unenviable assignment of showing up where the angry, misguided folks who failed Civics 101 don’t want them.

These agents are not cartoon villains. They aren’t stormtroopers. They’re civil servants doing a job a majority of Americans quietly want done even if they loudly pretend not to. And the people cheering when they fall somehow try to frame their contempt as virtue.

If this is what passes for comedy now—mocking the men and women working to keep communities safer while waving a flag that says I Care—the joke isn’t on ICE. It’s on the people who’ve been convinced that compassion means fighting to protect the rapists, murderers, and thieves living next door.

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