On Monday, popular singer and actress Selena Gomez posted a brief video clip in which she said she would “try everything” to protect immigrants facing the brunt of President Donald Trump’s vicious anti-immigrant raids.
Gomez posted the video on the same day that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 956 people in multiple raids across the country. The day before, ICE swept up nearly 1,200 individuals following an order from the Trump administration to arrest at least 1,500 people a day. The figure represents a nearly 300-500 percent increase over the number of daily ICE arrests during the Biden administration.
In the video, a visibly distraught and sobbing Gomez says “I’m so sorry. All my people are getting attacked. The children, I don’t understand. I wish I could do something, but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.” She has a Mexican flag emoji in the caption beneath the video.
The mass interest in Gomez’s comments reflects some of the anger and genuine disgust that millions of people feel watching Trump and his cabinet of billionaire parasites flaunt their ignorance and indifference to the lives of working class people of all backgrounds.
The video was viewed tens of millions of times after she posted it to her 422 million followers on Instagram. A repost of the video on X has been liked nearly 125,000 times, with many posts showing support to the singer for her bravery in speaking out.
Gomez, 32, is a US citizen of Mexican descent whose paternal grandparents settled in Texas in the 1970s. Her father was born in the United States, making him a legal citizen and also a potential target of the Trump administration’s criminal attack on the 14th Amendment to the Constitution:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
Gomez regularly refers to herself as a proud, third-generation Mexican-American.
Gomez has played a part in several film productions depicting the plight of youth, immigrants and working people. In 2019, she produced the HBO documentary “Living Undocumented,” about the plight of undocumented immigrant families living in the US.
In a Time opinion piece published in 2019, Gomez explained that she had agreed to produce the film because it captured “the shame, uncertainty, and fear I saw my own family struggle with” as working class people in Texas.
The anti-Trump video was removed from the singer’s account within hours of her posting on Monday, replaced by text proclaiming “Apparently it’s not ok to show empathy for people.” A number of far-right figures, fearing that sympathy for the plight of the undocumented might be contagious, have taken to denouncing the celebrity in abusive and hysterical tones.
Far-right Fox News blowhard and Trump supporter Sean Hannity on Monday asked the president’s “border czar” Thomas Homan to reply to Gomez’s post. Before letting him reply, Hannity launched into his own illiterate and dishonest attack on the actress.
I gotta ask your reaction to Selena Gomez. I didn’t see any postings of tears for all the women and American citizens murdered, all the people that were raped including children, all the other victims of violent crime. ... I didn’t see any tears on any of those issues. What was that all about?
In fact, members of the immigrant community are far less likely to commit violent crimes than their counterparts in the native-born population.
Homan, Hannity and Trump are liars. Newsweek magazine reported January 28:
The Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Newsweek on Tuesday that none of the deportees sent from the U.S. to Colombia in the first batch of repatriation flights under the new Trump administration had criminal records in either country, with their sole offense being in the U.S. illegally.
Those more likely to encounter violence and criminality are the unfortunates who fall into the clutches of US law enforcement, including among the immigrant population.
A 2018 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report titled “Neglect and Abuse of Unaccompanied Immigrant Children by U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” detailed physical abuse carried out by immigration officers, including the “smashing” of minors in the heads, tasering children “for amusement” and the strip searching and sexual assault of young girls.
Homan, who oversaw these illegal practices in the first Trump administration, did not bother to correct Hannity.
Instead, Homan hypocritically said that Gomez and others should “go to Congress and change the law” if they have concerns. Trump’s “border czar” failed to note his own employer’s attempts to bypass Congress in enacting unconstitutional anti-immigrant policies. Homan also blatantly lied to his audience, asserting “I don’t think we arrested any families” during his tenure.
Republican Sam Parker of Utah personally attacked and threatened Gomez. “Selena Gomez picked illegals over America because she’s the third-generation descendant of Mexican illegals who received citizenship in the ’87 Amnesty,” wrote Parker. “She has an entitlement attitude toward America, like her illegal grandparents. Maybe Selena should be deported, too?” To this menacing comment, Gomez replied “Thanks for the laugh and the threat.”