Idaho governor makes joke about ICE. It’s no laughing matter | Opinion

Gov. Brad Little on Monday during his State of the State address made a joke about ICE.

“For Idaho, the change from the last administration to having a Republican in the White House now is night and day,” Little said in one of his many glowing remarks about President Donald Trump. “Under Biden, Idaho was kept in the dark. Now, we have a real partner at the federal level.

“Nowhere is this more obvious than in safety,” Little said. “Ask any law enforcement officer on the ground and they’ll tell you — under the last administration, immigration enforcement wasn’t just slowed down. It was put on ice.”

Little paused and smiled. After he finally got some chuckles, Little said, “I knew you’d get it.”

He was clearly making a joke about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which has sent untold thousands of masked, armed agents into America’s cities to round up and deport undocumented immigrants — and violate the rights of anyone who might be nearby.

Little’s joke came less than a week after one of those ICE officers shot Renee Good in the face and killed her on a Minneapolis street. Good was a 37-year-old suburban mom.

“I’m not mad at you, bro,” were her last words.

“F***ing b*****,” were the ICE officer’s first words after he shot her.

Sorry, governor, but ICE is nothing to joke about, and you once had way more class than that.

It might have seemed like a cheap throwaway line, but it was beneath the office and the man.

What on earth makes you think that needs to be part of your State of the State address?

Imagine a Democratic governor somewhere making a Charlie Kirk joke.

We can only imagine how Little would handle things if an ICE agent shot and killed someone on the streets of Boise. Would he make an offhanded remark then?

It’s bad enough that Little has debased himself before Trump. Perhaps it’s understandable, this being an election year, that Little must sing Trump’s praises every chance he gets.

But he doesn’t have to start acting like him, too.

It was tasteless, especially considering the way ICE is operating.

The difference is, every day now, we’re seeing more and more evidence of ICE agents acting like masked thugs, freed under Trump to shove protesters and throw them to the ground, ask people for proof of their citizenship (show us your papers) without cause or reasonable suspicion (other than brown skin), and illegally detain U.S. citizens.

One ICE agent is recorded on video telling someone, “Have you not learned” from the shooting of Renee Good? In other words, don’t challenge us, or we might just shoot you in the face.

In the 1935 book “It Can’t Happen Here,” by Sinclair Lewis, an authoritarian president comes into power in the United States and establishes the Minute Men, a group of quasi-law enforcement thugs who terrorize the public and arrest anyone who disagrees with the president.

In one chapter, the Minute Men shoot and kill two dissenters. The justification for shooting is self-defense.

Sounds eerily prescient, as too much of that book does lately.

We should be taking deadly seriously the growing numbers and audacity of ICE agents, who have become Trump’s personal police force rather than Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

They’ve become answerable to no one and imbued with power by a lawless president and an unqualified Homeland Security secretary who didn’t even know what habeas corpus was, and who had the absolute gall to say an ICE shooting victim was involved in “domestic terrorism.”

These agents know they can do anything they want and get away with it, and they do it while hiding behind masks in unmarked vehicles with no identification, happily trampling on people’s rights.

No, governor, ICE is no laughing matter.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, assistant editor Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.

This story was originally published January 15, 2026 at 4:00 AM.