Department of Homeland Security respond to Zach Bryan’s anti-ICE song
The Department of Homeland Security have responded after Zach Bryan criticised ICE in a snippet of an unreleased song.
On October 3rd, Bryan took to Instagram to share a portion of the track, which is reportedly called ‘Bad News’, and it has since racked up over 120,000 likes on the social media platform.
Bryan reflectively sings at the beginning of the snippet, “Didn’t wake up dead or in jail, Some out-of-town boys been giving us hell, I got some bad news, woke up missing you, My friends are all degenerates but they’re all I’ve got, Generational talent of dropping the plot, Hope the cops came, cocky motherfuckers ain’t they.”
Then, on the second verse, he laments the current state of America, “And ICE is gonna come, bust down your door, Try to build a house no one builds no more, But I got a telephone, Kids are all scared and all alone, The Boss stopped bumping, the rock stopped rolling, The middle fingers rising and it won’t stop showing, I got some bad news, The fading of the red, white and blue.”
Now, Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary of public affairs, has responded to the snippet, telling TMZ that Bryan should “stick to ‘Pink Skies’,” referencing his single from 2024’s chart-topping The Great American Bar Scene.
Bryan has typically stayed away from bringing politics into his work, sharing in a now-deleted post on X in 2024, “The more a person includes politics into their life anywhere besides a ballot box the more I figure they don’t have anything interesting to do or say”.
At the Super Bowl in 2025, Bryan and comedian Shane Gillis were photographed with President Donald Trump, which he shared on social media, before quickly deleting, with the caption, “The actual smallest man”.
The singer-songwriter, who served in the US Navy until 2021, recently wrapped up his Quittin’ Time tour, which saw him play three shows at Fairview Park in Dublin and two headline dates at BST Hyde Park in London. Last month, he took to Michigan Stadium, also known as the Big House, in Ann Arbor, to play the biggest ticketed event in North American history.
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