Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is lashing out at musicians who used the Grammy Awards stage to denounce Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after one of the music industry’s biggest nights turned into a public rebuke of Trump-era immigration policy.
Several artists took aim at ICE during Sunday’s ceremony, responding to ongoing protests and outrage following the deadly Minneapolis shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by ICE and Border Patrol agents. Wearing white “ICE Out” pins and using their acceptance speeches to speak plainly, musicians rejected the administration’s framing of immigration enforcement as public safety.
Billie Eilish declared, “No one is illegal on stolen land,” while Bad Bunny opened his acceptance speech by saying, “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say ICE OUT,” drawing a standing ovation inside the venue. “We’re not savages. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens,” he said. “We are humans and we are Americans.”
Other artists, including Justin and Hailey Bieber, Kehlani, and Joni Mitchell, were seen wearing “ICE Out” pins in solidarity with demonstrators across the country. On the red carpet, Kehlani made her position unmistakably clear, saying she wanted to say “[expletive] ICE” outright and criticizing the idea that artists should remain silent when gathered in such a powerful space.
Noem, whose department oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, responded by rushing to the agency’s defense in comments to Fox News Digital. She insisted ICE officers are “wonderful, amazing people” protecting their own communities by targeting “murderers and rapists,” repeating long-standing administration talking points that critics say bear little resemblance to reality.
She also claimed the United States has reached historic lows in crime, asserting that Trump “has made us safer,” and dismissed the artists’ criticism as the work of “ill-informed famous musicians.” The comments ignored documented cases of ICE violence, wrongful deaths, and aggressive enforcement actions that have fueled protests nationwide.
The backlash underscores a growing cultural divide: celebrities using their platforms to humanize immigrants and call out state violence, while administration officials continue to frame ICE as beyond reproach. As the Grammys demonstrated, that narrative is no longer going uncontested in public—or politely.
What Noem derides as ignorance is, for many Americans, lived experience. And no amount of Fox News spin can erase the reality that the phrase “ICE Out” is no longer fringe—it’s being shouted from the biggest stages in the country.
