The Grammys traded music for anti-ICE messaging Sunday night, as top stars rallied behind a new left-wing slogan: “ICE Out.” Repeated onstage and worn as pins on celebrities’ outfits, the phrase reduced America’s immigration enforcement agency to the night’s designated villain.
Last week, ICE Out protests erupted in several liberal cities in response to the Trump administration’s intensified ICE operations and the recent deaths of Alex Pretti and Renée Good. Award winners at the Grammys then used their platform to amplify the message and intensify hostility toward ICE and its agents.
The awards ceremony featured a coordinated effort to criticize ICE, with several major artists using the ceremony to publicly denounce the border enforcement agency. Among the most prominent voices was Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican pop star, who declared “ICE Out” during his acceptance speech. He then insisted, “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens — we are humans, and we are Americans.” Last September, Bad Bunny planned no U.S. tour dates due to concerns over his audience getting detained by ICE agents, and he encouraged fans to attend his shows outside of the U.S. instead.
The Puerto Rican artist also said, “I want to say to the people, I know it’s tough to know, not to hate on these days…. So please, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love.” He previously referred to ICE agents as “those motherf*****s” and “sons of b*****s” when he witnessed ICE operations in Puerto Rico.
Billie Eilish, who won the Song of the Year award, spent her acceptance speech opposing ICE’s actions and preaching to the choir. “No one is illegal on stolen land,” she remarked. “I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter.” As she concluded her speech, Eilish said, “F*** ICE.” Eilish previously took to social media to call ICE a “federally funded and supported terrorist group.”
Actor Mark Ruffalo was an influential voice in the wave of celebrity backlash against ICE weeks before the issue reached the Grammy stage. At the Golden Globe Awards in January, Ruffalo walked the red carpet wearing a black-and-white pin reading “BE GOOD,” a reference to Renée Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis earlier that month. Speaking to reporters, Ruffalo called out President Donald Trump. “We’re in the middle of a war with Venezuela that we illegally invaded. He’s telling the world that international law doesn’t matter to him. The only thing that matters to him is his own morality, but the guy is a convicted felon, a convicted rapist,” Ruffalo stated. He went on to call the president a “pedophile” and “the worst human being.”
This anti-ICE rhetoric has also invaded public schools. In Washington State, a middle school walkout tied to opposition against Immigration and Customs Enforcement sparked backlash after a mother confronted administrators and removed her daughter from class. Video circulating online shows the mother objecting to the decision to allow students to participate in the anti-ICE demonstration during the school day. “This is f*****g unbelievable,” she remarked.
She then entered the building and demanded that her daughter be pulled out of the school immediately. The mother repeatedly made clear that she was concerned about the environment her child was placed in, telling school officials, “This is disrupting traffic and my child’s education.” She continued, “As I walked up [to the school], I was getting booed by every single student … because I didn’t honk. I pulled up to make sure everyone was okay.”
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