“About 2 weeks into shooting, everyone, including us, found out Ben Shapiro was involved,” Gilbert Trejo wrote in an Instagram Story over the weekend. He defended his father, Danny Trejo, from the backlash after news broke that the 82-year-old actor had been cast in “Pawn Shop.” Shapiro’s Daily Wire co-produced the thriller, and several outlets have described it as a pro-ICE movie.

For a lot of us, Danny Trejo is like family. He is Machete, a veteran advocate and a voice for people struggling with addiction, and the man The Hill calls “an institution in Southern California life,” with a small restaurant chain and a coffee shop in Los Angeles. That is why it stung to see him called a “sellout” and a “traitor” across social media in recent days, as the Los Angeles Times reported. So what exactly is this movie, and how did Trejo end up in it?

“Pawn Shop” is a Daily Wire thriller reportedly inspired by the killing of Renée Good

“Pawn Shop” is co-produced by the Daily Wire and Bonfire Legend. The Daily Wire is the right-wing media company Shapiro launched in 2015, and Bonfire Legend is the production company prolific producer Dallas Sonnier formed in 2021. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle first reported Trejo’s casting after speaking with a castmate on set and Livingston residents who had seen and photographed the actor downtown. Deadline then reviewed the call sheet and confirmed that Trejo, Harvey Keitel, and Henry Thomas were scheduled to appear.

The official logline reads: “When a Minneapolis riot forces a young ICE officer to complete a high-stakes arrest alone after his partner is killed, he is hunted through the streets by a furious mob intent on freeing the prisoner and punishing anyone who still upholds the law. Barricaded inside a neighborhood pawn shop with a hard-edged Hispanic veteran and the man’s progressive college-age grandson, ordinary men must choose between the rule of law and the chaos that wants to burn it all down in a modern siege of honor and defiance.”

The Bulwark described the film as reportedly inspired by the fatal shooting of Renée Good. Good was a U.S. citizen killed by ICE in Minneapolis in January, amid growing protests against President Trump’s deportation operations. TMZ captured video that appeared to recreate her death, according to The Hill, and Deadline reported that the film’s opening scene appears to dramatize the shooting. Complex reported that a leaked script reviewed by the Montana Free Press reportedly includes a storyline about an immigrant revealed to have ties to MS-13.

Danny Trejo says he is “not pro-ICE”

Trejo addressed the criticism on Friday, Oct. 9, in an Instagram post. “I want to address some social media comments about me. Make no mistake. I am a proud Mexican who has always been and will always be a supporter of my community,” he wrote. “I am also obviously pro-immigrant. I am not pro-ICE. I know where I come from and I know our struggles. I am an actor. My job is to tell a story.” The Hill reported that he also told TMZ that day that he had told people on set he was drawn to playing a positive depiction of a Latino veteran.

The Los Angeles Times noted that Trejo has previously voiced support for immigrant communities. In the spring of 2020, he joined a coalition of Latino actors behind the #AyudaEnEspanol campaign, which pushed for COVID-19 resource kits in Spanish for Latino migrant farmworkers across the country. In fall 2025, TMZ asked him to share a message with families affected by ICE raids. “To the families, keep up hope,” Trejo said. “Help your neighbor and do whatever you can for people in need.”

His son says Danny Trejo didn’t know Ben Shapiro was behind the film

Gilbert Trejo, also an actor, addressed the backlash in a statement later shared by the San Fernando Valley Sun/El Sol. “He was booked on a film; it’s not pro-ICE, it’s not overtly pro anything,” he wrote. Trejo said his father’s agent described the project as “a complicated story about a complicated time, where everyone looks bad except you, the hardworking Mexican shop owner who just wants peace.”

“He jumped at the idea of playing a good guy,” Gilbert wrote. The family learned of Shapiro’s involvement two weeks into filming, he said, and “My 82-year-old dad has never heard of Ben Shapiro; I had to explain to him who that is, and what kind of guy he is.”

According to Gilbert, his father’s contract keeps him from walking away. “My dad contractually can’t badmouth him, the film, or walk away without being sued for breach of contract,” he wrote. “He couldn’t even release the statement he wanted to.” He called his father “handcuffed to this stupid project” and said, “swaths of people have instantly turned their back on him without knowing any of the facts.” In his view, Shapiro “got Mexicans to abandon one of their heroes, got his own name to the top of Google’s searches, and made us look like angry fools lacking any nuance. He wins.”

Complex noted that neither the contractual restrictions nor the timeline of when Trejo learned about Shapiro had been independently confirmed. HuffPost said it reached out to representatives for Trejo and the Daily Wire, and none of the coverage we reviewed included a response from the Daily Wire to Gilbert’s account. Complex also quoted an Instagram commenter who identified as a Livingston resident. The commenter said the production’s private security had menaced locals for weeks and criticized “the depiction of the brutalization of brown communities as entertainment.” Despite having once respected Trejo for his sobriety advocacy, the commenter concluded: “no mas.”

Livingston, Montana, shut the production down briefly

Residents of Livingston protested the alleged use of blank gunshots, pyrotechnics, and a staged car wreck without proper notice to residents and businesses, Deadline reported. The complaint list also added complex road closures and armed private security. HuffPost reported that the production was also blocking access to the city’s only food pantry.

The Livingston city commission paused production on Oct. 3, and filming resumed on Oct. 6 after officials reinstated the permits, according to the Los Angeles Times. Deadline reported that the revised permit requires the crew to keep the Livingston Food Resource Center accessible and to shield the public from violent scenes and noise. The production also agreed that its private security would not police or harass locals on nearby public streets.

Shapiro called the pause “content discrimination,” according to The Hill, and blamed “politics, pure and simple,” according to Complex. Deadline reported that he described the suspension as “a violation of the First Amendment” and called the film’s critics “censorious jackasses.”

Tags: Danny Trejo, Ice