The chart-topping pop star and actor Renée Rapp has excoriated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Donald Trump in an expletive-filled onstage rant.
Rapp was performing in Portland, Oregon, where Trump is attempting to send national guard troops, claiming that the city is a “war zone”. There have been continuous protests outside the city’s Ice facility in recent months.
Rapp told the concert audience that as she was performing in Portland, “at the same time, some other people who shouldn’t fucking be here are … So let’s just make a few things abundantly fucking clear. Fuck Ice. Fuck this administration. And fuck Trump.”
She is one of the fastest rising pop stars in the US, earning a UK No 1 album in August for her second album Bite Me, which reached No 3 in the US. She is also a successful stage and screen actor, taking a lead role in the Broadway production of the Mean Girls musical and in TV series The Sex Lives of College Girls.
Rapp joins a number of musicians opposing Ice as immigration crackdowns intensify in the US under the Trump administration.
“I got a new chain, it say: Fuck Ice,” declared Chance the Rapper on his recent album, Star Line. Meanwhile, Finneas – the singer and brother of Billie Eilish, who produces her music – said of an Ice protest he attended in Los Angeles: “Teargassed almost immediately at the very peaceful protest downtown. They’re inciting this.” Tyler, the Creator, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong and Kehlani also decried Ice’s activity in Los Angeles.
Earlier this month, the country music star Zach Bryan debuted a snippet of a new song with lyrics including: “Ice is gonna come bust down your door … Kids are all scared and all alone.” The US Department of Homeland Security criticised him, with assistant secretary of public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, telling Bryan to “stick to Pink Skies, dude”, referring to one of his previous hits. The department also mockingly soundtracked an Ice enforcement video with a Bryan song.
This week, the indie record labels Epitaph and Anti- called on Spotify to stop carrying advertisements for Ice. “Artists and fans deserve platforms that reflect the values of the culture they sustain,” each label said in a shared statement. Earlier in the week, Spotify defended carrying the ads, saying the “content does not violate our advertising policies”.
On Wednesday, Trump’s attempts to deploy national guard troops in the left-leaning Portland were blocked by a federal judge in Oregon, extending a previous order.
Federal agents have clashed with protesters during the months-long protests, making arrests and firing non-lethal rounds and teargas, while local police have separately made arrests. The protests have often been whimsical and absurdist, featuring inflatable costumes and naked bike rides.
The Trump administration said it would “crush violent radical left terrorism” with the troop deployment, but Oregon officials have countered that claim. “There is no insurrection, there is no threat to national security,” said governor Tina Kotek, while Portland mayor Keith Wilson said “we will not engage” with Ice and affirmed Portland’s “sanctuary city” status for immigrants.
“The actions of certain federal officers continue to be deeply disturbing to our community,” Wilson said in a statement, “and the lack of accountability and transparency for what appears to be unconstitutional behaviour against individuals expressing their rights will only serve to deepen the divide between this facility and our community.”
