Comedian 'Jokes' About Killing ICE Agents, Ends Up on Wrong End of DHS Home Raid
A Brooklyn comedian thought he would celebrate Cinco de Mayo by encouraging people to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Federal authorities were not amused, the New York Post reported.
Jake Flores of Brooklyn went on a Twitter rant May 5 about the cultural appropriation of whites, according to BizPac Review.
“Ok here’s how Cinco de Mayo works in 2018. White people are allowed to culturally appropriate on the condition that you help to destroy ICE. You kill 1 ICE agent and you get to wear a sombrero. 2 kills and you can wear a pancho,” he tweeted in a since-deleted post.
Several other tweets continued what Flores called humor, describing what prizes would be given for killing five ICE agents and then for 100 kills.
The next day, he received an unwelcome visit — from the agency whose members he just put in someone’s crosshairs.
Lmao Homeland Security just busted down my door over a joke
— Jake Flores 🇵🇸 (@feraljokes) May 6, 2018
“The kind of language expressed in the tweets, even in an allegedly joking manner, is reckless and irresponsible,” ICE press secretary Jennifer Elzea said in a statement. “It potentially puts at risk those who have taken an oath to uphold the law and protect public safety.”
Flores talked at length about the ICE visit, according to Splinter News.
He said agents interviewed him and photographed his home.
“So we have this conversation and they kind of just make it clear that nothing’s going to happen, we’re going to keep an eye on you, which is alarming and annoying, and maybe they’re listening to this phone call right now,” he said.
Flores claimed that he told the ICE agents how wrong they were.
“But at the end of it, the weird part is, we start to just get into a conversation about why I don’t like ICE. … So I explained this to him, and said the difference between the police and ICE is that the police have a statement mission that, on some level, is good, and then still mess it up,” he said.
“But with ICE, their stated mission is what we disagree with,” he said.
This ticks me off. I hate ICE too but he's "just joking" is the excuse the right uses all the time. I don't care whose side you are on. It's not right to make jokes like this. Period. https://t.co/83XYBZHrXR
— Andrew Brozek (@AndyBandana) May 10, 2018
Flores said he would not apologize for tweets he considered humorous.
“I still think they’re funny,” he said. “I think one of the worst things you can do when these things happen as a Twitter person or a comedian is apologize, because as soon as you apologize, you give all this legitimacy to any argument that you’re a bad person who did something horrible.”
Flores said he believes he fills an important role.
“We do need culture and jokes and people that take the edge off the whole world, and that didn’t really exist until recently. The left used to be very humorless and scolding. So I’m always happy to contribute and to be a part of what I think isn’t the most important part of any of this stuff, but a part that needs to be there,” he said.
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