John Oliver Says ICE Assertion That Detention Is “Nonpunitive” Is Like Claiming ‘Wicked’ Wasn’t Too Long: “Undercut By Empirical Evidence”​on March 10, 2025 at 4:09 am

For his main topic of the evening, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver delved into ICE detention centers, exploring the various ethical and legal issues revolving around detaining undocumented immigrants for uncertain periods of time.

At one point, the political comic quipped that ICE’s website’s assertion that their holding facilities are “nonpunitive” was “like claiming … the Wicked movie wasn’t 30 minutes too long. It is a bold assertion sharply undercut by empirical evidence.”

Elsewhere during the segment, Oliver addressed Democrats’ floundering to meet the current political moment, saying that opposition members like U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are failing to “harness outrage” from constituents.

Addressing Slotkin’s Democratic response to president Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress, Oliver questioned her slamming of POTUS by uplifting Ronald Reagan: “I will admit, there are some positive things you can say about Reagan, like he was our only president to make a movie with a chimp or he’s dead, but his moral clarity might come as a surprise to any gay people who lived through the 1980s. I’m just saying, if you brought Reagan back from the dead, and told him all the racist sh– Trump has managed to do in less than two months, he’d come so hard he’d die again.”

Oliver also touched on the various GOP town halls filled with aggrieved constituents; Sen. Roger Marshall, who held one such meeting, said the crowd was “one of the rudest audiences I’ve ever had.”

“Grow up! Your job is to listen to people complain and act on their concerns,” the host said in response. “If you’re not doing that, people don’t owe you politeness. You know who gets to complain about a rude audience? Patti LuPone when someone’s texting, end of list.”

Rep. Mike Johnson took it a step further and claimed that attendees were paid off by Democrats, to which Oliver responded: “‘The only reason anyone wouldn’t like me is if they were being paid to hate me’ would admittedly be a pretty iconic Housewives intro, but it’s an utterly transparent political move. Did you seriously get into this line of work expecting zero haters?”