{"id":159918,"date":"2026-02-28T14:08:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T14:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=159918"},"modified":"2026-02-28T14:08:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T14:08:48","slug":"he-made-a-fake-ice-deportation-tip-line-then-a-kindergarten-teacher-called","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=159918","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;He made a fake ICE deportation tip line. Then a kindergarten teacher called.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2026\/02\/20\/fake-ice-tip-line-viral\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WaPo<\/a>: &#8220;Ben Palmer, a stand-up comic in Nashville, has built a following online with his signature style of elaborate deadpan pranks, stumbling his way onto court TV shows and pyramid-scheme calls to poke fun at the latent absurdities of American life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Then in January of last year, he had an idea for a new bit: He\u2019d set up a fake tip line that people could use to report anyone they thought was an undocumented immigrant. It was darker than his other stunts, but it felt topical, the kind of challenge he wanted to try. At the very least, he thought, he might get a few calls he could talk about at his next show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Instead, his tip line has received nearly 100 submissions from across the country: people reporting their neighbors, ex-lovers, Uber drivers, strangers they saw at the grocery store. One tip came from a teacher reporting the parents of a kindergarten student at her school&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">What began as a comedy routine has become one of the most viral pieces of social satire during President Donald Trump\u2019s mass-deportation campaign. The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@palmertrolls\/video\/7602378617418452279\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">kindergarten video<\/a>\u00a0has been watched more than 20 million times on TikTok and exploded across\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/reel\/1404136041250589\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/therewasanattempt\/comments\/1quhcnn\/by_a_kindergarten_teacher_to_get_her_students\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reddit<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zJnkikcrHA0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YouTube<\/a>, where one commenter called it \u201cone of the most creative, nonviolent and effective acts of resistance\u201d they\u2019d ever seen.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WaPo: &#8220;Ben Palmer, a stand-up comic in Nashville, has built a following online with his signature style of elaborate deadpan pranks, stumbling his way onto court TV shows and pyramid-scheme calls to poke fun at the latent absurdities of American life. Then in January of last year, he had an idea for a new bit:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159919,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159918\/revisions\/159919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}