Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers speaks out again on ICE activity
Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers speaks out again on ICE activity before his team played the Boston Celtics on Feb. 1, 2025.
BOSTON – Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers has spoken out against the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on two occasions since October, and he was asked on Feb. 1 before his team played the Boston Celtics if he stood by his previous comments.
In particular, he was asked whether he still believed the killing of U.S. citizen Renée Nicole Macklin Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7 was still murder. Rivers had called the fatal shooting “straight-up murder” on Jan. 9.
“Both,” Rivers said. “And I don’t change that at all.”
He continued: “You know, my dad [Grady] was a cop [in Maywood, Illinois]. My best friend is a cop. And he’s probably more upset about it than me. The training of ICE is horrible. We all know that. And being in Minnesota, where there’s 130,000, I think, undocumented people, why not Texas where there’s 1.7 million undocumented? I look at our league. I look at the NBA. We’re celebrating Pioneer’s Day today, right? And I look at our league and think [Nigerian immigrant and former Houston Rockets player Hakeem] Olajuwon could have been taken off the streets. But we would, right now, the way brown people feel, only the brown people would be taken off the streets and it’s just not right. And it’s not morally right, so I stand by my words 100%.”
Rivers was then asked if he thought brown people in this country should legally be worried about ICE.
“Yeah. Yeah. We all should be,” Rivers said. “Yeah. If you’re walking down the street and [executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations for ICE and the department of homeland security] Tom Homan, who is the head, just has said they’re targeting people by their color and if they can speak the language. If you’re brown, you’re nervous.
“Because I don’t see anybody going in the Ukrainian villages and arresting anybody. All we can go by is what we see. That’s all I can go by. I’m not saying I’m 100% right about everything, I think we all, everybody in this room, I would say want a safer America. I don’t know if what we’re doing right now is making us safer. I know those two people [Macklin Good and Alex Pretti] in Minnesota would definitely disagree with that.”
Alex Pretti was fatally shot by a border patrol agent on Jan. 24 during protests of government activity in Minneapolis. Pretti was a Green Bay Preble High School alumnus and U.S. Citizen.
Rivers also referenced a July, 2025 comment from Homan on FOX News. Homan said, “People need to understand, ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them. They just go through the observations, get articulable facts, based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”
Days later on CNN Homan said, “Physical description cannot be the sole reason to detain and question somebody. That can’t be the sole reason to raise reasonable suspicion. It’s a myriad of factors.”
On Sept. 8, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo that “authorizes immigration officers to ‘interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States.’”
