HBO’s John Oliver waited until Sunday to kick off the 2026 season of Last Week Tonight and quickly fell in with the rest of the late night comedians in going after ICE. During his denunciation ritual, Oliver would praise Democrats for shutting down the Department of Homeland Security and call for ICE to be defunded and done away with. Oliver cued up a video by lamenting ICE’s recent budget increases, “Because DHS’s resources are now being pointed at immigration more heavily than ever before to the point it’s being called ‘a veritable Department of Deportation.’ ICE alone was handed an extra $75 billion to spend over Trump's term, tripling its annual budget and leading to this startling fact.” In the video, the narrator joined Oliver in mourning, “Overnight, it became the highest-funded law enforcement agency in U.S. history. If ICE was a military, it would be the 17th richest in the world, worth about the same as Canada's entire armed forces.”   John Oliver kicked off his 2026 season by declaring "whatever the appropriate budget for ICE is—and they're making a pretty compelling argument for it being zero right now" while later praising Democrats for shutting down DHS, "So what can we do? Well, first, and most… pic.twitter.com/wNKtsFIw5U — Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) February 17, 2026   Oliver reacted by echoing the Canada analogy while also suggesting ICE should be defunded, “It's true! And whatever the appropriate budget for ICE is—and they're making a pretty compelling argument for it being zero right now—one thing it should definitely not be is the same as the entire Canadian military. Though to be fair, that's not a perfect one-to-one, as I'm pretty sure the Canadian military doesn't totally eat shit on slightly slippery sidewalks.” ICE receiving roughly the same amount of money as the Canadian military says more about Canadian politicians than it does ICE. Nevertheless, Oliver was far from finished. Later, Oliver praised Democrats for their partial government shutdown, “So what can we do? Well, first, and most immediately, with DHS in partial shutdown over its funding, Democrats have to use every ounce of leverage they've got to get major concessions. Bernie Sanders has proposed an amendment that would repeal the $75 billion in additional funding that ICE received, and I don’t know if they'll be able to get all the way to that. They should at the very least get as many hard, enforceable limits on immigration agents' activities as possible.” While Oliver wants the men and women of FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the TSA—not to mention any American travelers who may have to deal with TSA delays—to suffer so that he can stomp his feet on TV, he also doubled down on the idea that ICE has got to go: Now, second, we need to get rid of ICE, period. Public trust in it right now is hovering somewhere between Purdue Pharma and the Titan submersible. It is just not salvageable. And if you're thinking, who will enforce immigration law if ICE is gone? I don’t know, maybe the agencies that did it for decades before 2003. As for DHS as a whole, I would argue it's no longer tenable in its current form. And while maybe there's an argument for having a larger agency coordinating different federal departments, it should probably be redesigned from the ground up, and deliberately this time, not by suddenly gluing together org charts in a blind panic. Interestingly, Oliver would later concede that even if ICE went away and a DOJ-led INS was brought back, immigration laws would still be on the books, which raises the question: if John Oliver had his way, what would immigration law look like? On Sunday, that was a question Oliver was unwilling to consider. Here is a transcript for the February 15 show: HBO Last Week Tonight with John Oliver 2/15/2026 11:41 PM ET JOHN OLIVER: Because DHS’s resources are now being pointed at immigration more heavily than ever before to the point it’s being called “a veritable Department of Deportation.” ICE alone was handed an extra $75 billion to spend over Trump's term, tripling its annual budget and leading to this startling fact. NARRATOR: Overnight, it became the highest-funded law enforcement agency in U.S. history. If ICE was a military, it would be the 17th richest in the world, worth about the same as Canada's entire armed forces. OLIVER: It's true! And whatever the appropriate budget for ICE is—and they're making a pretty compelling argument for it being zero right now—one thing it should definitely not be is the same as the entire Canadian military. Though to be fair, that's not a perfect one-to-one, as I'm pretty sure the Canadian military doesn't totally eat shit on slightly slippery sidewalks. … So what can we do? Well, first, and most immediately, with DHS in partial shutdown over its funding, Democrats have to use every ounce of leverage they've got to get major concessions. Bernie Sanders has proposed an amendment that would repeal the $75 billion in additional funding that ICE received, and I don’t know if they'll be able to get all the way to that. They should at the very least get as many hard, enforceable limits on immigration agents' activities as possible. Now, second, we need to get rid of ICE, period. Public trust in it right now is hovering somewhere between Purdue Pharma and the Titan submersible. It is just not salvageable. And if you're thinking, who will enforce immigration law if ICE is gone? I don’t know, maybe the agencies that did it for decades before 2003. As for DHS as a whole, I would argue it's no longer tenable in its current form. And while maybe there's an argument for having a larger agency coordinating different federal departments, it should probably be redesigned from the ground up, and deliberately this time, not by suddenly gluing together org charts in a blind panic.