A small salute to the gang at “Saturday Night Live,” the way they reacted to the latest threat from Kristi Noem, the Trump administration’s secretary of Homeland Security.
On one of those right-wing podcasts the other night, Noem declared Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in February will be “all over” the Super Bowl, where the Puerto Rican rapper and record producer Bad Bunny is now scheduled to be the halftime show headliner.
She said it as ICE agents are already grabbing Latinos — many of them innocent U.S. citizens whose only crime is their complexion — off the streets, sending a chill across millions of immigrant households all across America.
To which the “SNL” crew offered this comic response over the weekend: Colin Jost, pretending to be the snarling Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, tells a crowd of military brass, “Got a sign-up sheet for ICE in the hallway. Check it out. … And we’ll be doing it in one of the bloodiest war-torn places on the face of the earth — Portland, Oregon.”
Yup, bloody Portland.
As Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker told CNN over the weekend, agents have been “raiding [Chicago] neighborhoods where, instead of going after the bad guys, they’re just picking up people who are brown and Black and then checking their credentials.”
Pritzker cited middle-of-the-night raids on apartment buildings where agents “broke windows, they broke down doors, they ransacked the place.”
As for Noem, she made her remarks about ICE agents being “all over” the Super Bowl as an unsubtle response to Latinos wanting to see Bad Bunny, whose talent and popularity (and ethnic background) are an affront to the Trump administration.
To which “SNL’s” Michael Che, co-anchor of “Weekend Update,” called on ICE agents at the big football game to “you know, to catch all those farm workers who can afford Super Bowl tickets.”
Laughter in the face of big-booted threats — it’s what we’re down to, folks.
ICE agents “all over” the Super Bowl?
Wait till they’re “all over” your local polling place. They’ll be there, all right. The Trump folks, never missing a chance at raw intimidation, will want to scare away anybody with a dark complexion or a Spanish accent.
As for Latinos getting anywhere near the Super Bowl, the “SNL” folks got it right on strict economic terms — with its ticket prices a year ago ranging from $8,764 to $37,000, there’s not much ticket demand among Latino “farm workers.”
But Noem wasn’t talking ticket prices. She was making a cultural statement to all Latinos: We don’t want your kind around here.
The Super Bowl is a place for people with money.
People with power.
You know — white people.
If you get near the Super Bowl, we’re coming after you. And if it turns out you’re an American citizen, and we blew the arrest, well, we’ll worry about that if we can find you later, somewhere in the bowels of some U.S. prison system.
So stay away.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).
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