Like the reported five million plus Americans who took to the streets across the country over the weekend as part of the massive “No Kings” rallies, Bad Bunny is not happy with the Trump administration’s recent actions. In a video posted to his Instagram Story on Tuesday (June 17), the singer lashed out at what he said was a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in his native Puerto Rico.
“Those motherf–kers are in these cars, RAV4’s,” Bad Bunny can be heard saying in the video in Spanish over footage of a scrum of unmarked SUVs blocking the street and seemingly apprehending some people on what the singer said was Avenida Pontezuela in Carolina, Puerto Rico. “They came here… sons of b–ches, instead of letting the people alone and working.”
At press time it was unclear what the footage Bad Bunny posted was depicting, but if the action was part of the Trump administration’s stepped-up ICE raids all over the U.S. it comes after the president surged more than 4,000 National Guard members and 700 active-duty Marines into Los Angeles — over the objections of both the mayor and the state’s governor — to quell what have been mostly peaceful protests against the ICE raids in that city.
Though Trump promised to remove criminals who are in the U.S. without proper documentation, the ICE raids have so far targeted a much wider swath of folks. NPR reported recently that the raids in Puerto Rico have mostly rounded up Dominican immigrants in actions that harken back to the island’s “long history of anti-Dominican racism,” with racial profiling possibly playing a role in the arrests.
Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Puerto Rico Rebecca González-Ramos said agents on the island nation have done surprise raids at hotels and construction sites, questioned people in the street and asked workers at the department of motor vehicles to hand over the names and addresses of the estimated 6,000 people who got licenses under an immigrant-friendly law that opened driving privileges to people without legal status, according to NPR.
González-Ramos added that so far ICE agents in P.R. have arrested close to 500 immigrants for deportation in the first four months of Trump’s second administration, less than 80 of whom had criminal records; three-quarters of those arrested have been Dominican nationals.
Bad Bunny joins a rising chorus of artists who’ve lashed out at the ICE raids. Over the weekend, Olivia Rodrigo posted her thoughts on the ICE deportations, saying, “I’ve lived in LA my whole life, and I’m deeply upset about these violent deportations of my neighbors under the current administration. LA simply wouldn’t exist without immigrants.”
Addison Rae also said she was “so disappointed and disturbed by what is happening across our nation. This country could not exist without immigrants. Every human being deserves the right to exist in an environment that makes them feel safe, lovingly protected, and embraced.” Finneas claimed he was tear-gassed during a peaceful protest in L.A. earlier this month, writing “F–K ICE… If you are into this fascist s–t you are small and weak and will lose.”
Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong has also hit out at ICE, in addition to Katy Perry who has called the raids a “huge injustice,” while Shakira said she lives in “constant fear” as an immigrant in the U.S. Others who protested the actions in L.A. include Tyler, the Creator, The Game, Kehlani, Tom Morello, Reneé Rapp and Rebecca Black.
Earlier this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued the Trump administration to end what he said was the “illegal and unnecessary takeover of a CalGuard unit, which has needlessly escalated chaos and violence in the Los Angeles region.” The lawsuit names Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Department of Defense, in a filing that outlines “why the takeover violates the U.S. Constitution and exceeds the President’s Title 10 authority, not only because the takeover occurred without the consent or input of the Governor, as federal law requires, but also because it was unwarranted.”
Trump responded over the weekend by saying that ICE must “expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” cities the president described as “the core of the Democrat Power Center.”
