Department of Homeland Security slams Billie Eilish’s ICE post
The United States Department of Homeland Security has slammed Billie Eilish, who, among dozens of other artists, used her social media to call out ICE in light of a fatal shooting in Minneapolis.
Eilish, along with the likes of Amanda Seyfried, Joe Keery, Dave Matthews, and Mark Ruffalo, posted online about the shooting, which saw Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, killed in her vehicle by an ICE officer in Minnesota.
Though Eilish added no words of her own, she re-shared a post to her Instagram story, which called ICE a “terrorist group”.
In a statement to Billboard, DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin reacted to her post, which all 124 million of her followers might have seen: “Clearly, Billie Eilish has not seen the newly released footage, which corroborates what DHS has stated all along — that this individual was impeding law enforcement and weaponized her vehicle in an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to federal law enforcement.”
The new video depicts Good insisting, “I’m not mad at you,” to the agent, and clarifying that everything was “fine” before being fatally shot. After the shooting, a man can be heard calling her a “fucking bitch”.
The officer, Jonathan Ross, had been “in fear of his own life [and] the lives of his fellow officers and acted in self-defense,” McLaughlin went on to claim. “The American people can watch this video with their own eyes and ears and judge for themselves.”
The statement went on: “ICE does not separate families. Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates. This is consistent with past administrations’ immigration enforcement.”
Therefore, McLaughlin argued, “It’s garbage rhetoric from the likes of Billie Eilish that is leading to a 1,300% increase in assaults and 3,200% increase in vehicle rammings against our brave law enforcement.”
President Trump also weighed in on the incident; he deemed Good “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” and insisted she was “shot in self-defense” on Truth Social.
Artists continue to share anti-ICE statements online. Long-time Trump dissenter Neil Young wrote in a scathing op-ed, “Something has to change this. We know what to do. Rise up. Peacefully in millions. Too many innocent people are dying. It’s ICE cold here in America. There was no ICE before Trump. No soldiers in the streets before Trump. Every move he makes is to build instability so he can stay in power.”
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