Joe Rogan came out in support of foreign-born university students across the U.S. who have been detained or face deportation for protesting Israel amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
“Isn’t a university supposed to be a place where someone’s allowed to express themselves and have opinions?” Rogan asked comedian Mike Vecchione on Tuesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.”
Rogan, who endorsed Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election, joined a growing group of podcasters who have begun to turn on the president.
The comedian previously attacked Trump’s immigration enforcement in an episode earlier this month, criticizing raids for targeting workplaces instead of violent criminals.
Actor Mark Ruffalo subsequently slammed Rogan’s about-face in a post on Threads, saying, “It’s a little late now to pretend like project 2025 didn’t exist and wasn’t the play book all along.”
On Tuesday, Rogan denounced the president’s aggressive crackdown on immigration once again, this time condemning the Trump administration for detaining visa and green-card holders, despite a campaign promise of focusing on violent criminals.
During the episode, Rogan claimed “friends” and “cops” in New York City have told him that increases in immigration have resulted in an “elevated number of assaults and crimes and robberies” in the city.
“And so, what’s the response to that? Well, now you have this insane policy where they’re going to Home Depot and rounding people up, and it’s kind of scary, you know, and people that are American citizens,” Rogan said.
Rogan called Trump’s aggressive enforcement “an overcorrection.”
“You got a bunch of people that are totally innocent, they are going to get caught up in that. They have been, you know, they have been,” Rogan said. “A lot of people that have green cards, a lot of people that are supposed to be over here.”
Among those who have been caught up in Trump’s immigration enforcement are university students who openly protested against Israel, including Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder who was detained after the administration claimed his beliefs and presence in the U.S. could hurt American foreign policy.
Mohsen Mahdawi, another Columbia student who led peaceful pro-Palestinian protests on campus, was arrested during his citizenship interview. He was released after 16 days in detention, but said the administration’s “intimidation” would “not silence” him.
Rogan called it “fucking crazy” that “they’re kicking students out that like write articles they don’t like.” Though he did not name a specific case, the comment seemed to be a reference to Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was taken by federal agents and held for more than six weeks after co-authoring an op-ed in her student newspaper calling on the university to divest from Israeli companies.
“They’re writing something down, and they’re not calling for violence either. And they’re getting challenged. That’s supposed to be how it happens,” Rogan said. “You get challenged. Smarter people have better arguments or your argument stands.”
Vecchione said that a university is “supposed to be a place for discourse,” and Rogan agreed.
“You’re deporting people because you don’t like who they’re criticizing,” Rogan said. “Like that gets kind of shifty.”