Ariana Grande unleashed a fierce condemnation of the White House for using her song “Bye” in a video glorifying US immigration arrests, slamming the clip as “barbaric.”
The White House dropped the TikTok video featuring US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arresting individuals, with Grande’s track blaring in the background. The caption read: “Bye-bye. President Trump has delivered the most secure border in history.”
Grande fired back in the comments section, stating, “Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense. F*** ICE.”
By Friday morning, her comment vanished from the post. Grande’s representatives confirmed she made the statement, but it was “not publicly visible” for unknown reasons.
A source close to Grande revealed her team is looking into removing the song from the video. The audio track has since been muted or removed entirely. The TikTok still exists but now shows: “This sound isn’t available.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded, stating, “We’ll say this one last time: what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens.”
This response seems to reference Grande’s song “One Last Time” from her 2014 album My Everything.
Since Trump’s return to office in January 2025, ICE enforcement operations have ramped up across major US cities. His administration pushes policies that accelerate deportations and ramp up border detentions.
The crackdown has sparked massive protests. Anti-ICE demonstrations erupted in Los Angeles following raids in June 2025, spreading to cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco. Protesters accuse the administration of criminalizing migrants and employing militarized tactics.
Last year, Grande directed an Instagram post at Trump voters, questioning whether their lives improved after migrants were “violently torn from their families and communities.”
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai responded to Grande’s post using her own song titles like “Save Your Tears,” “Just Like Magic,” and “Get Well Soon.”
Numerous musicians have publicly protested their music being used in immigration-related posts. In November 2025, Olivia Rodrigo slammed the White House and the Department of Homeland Security after they used her song “All-American Bitch” in a video urging undocumented migrants to “self-deport,” stating: “Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.”
In December 2025, Sabrina Carpenter condemned the White House for using her song “Juno” in an ICE arrest video as “evil and disgusting,” insisting: “Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.”
SZA also criticized the administration for using her song “Big Boys” in a separate deportation-related post, calling it “PEAK DARK” and denouncing it as “inhumanity + shock and aw[e] tactics.”
Grande is currently on her 41-date ‘Eternal Sunshine’ tour, her first since 2019. The tour kicked off in Oakland, California, on June 6 and runs through September, including multiple dates at London’s O2 Arena.
The Wicked star is gearing up to release her eighth studio album Petal on July 31. Last month, she dropped the lead single “Hate That I Made You Love Me,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking her 10th chart-topping single in the US.
