Selena Gomez slammed a Republican politician who said she should be deported after sharing an emotional video appearing to react to President Donald Trump’s recent immigration crackdown earlier this week.
The Emilia Pérez star, 32, responded on Instagram to Sam Parker, a 2018 Republican Senate candidate from Utah, who wrote on X, “Deport Selena Gomez” after criticizing her video on his personal account on X shortly after it was posted.
In a post on her Instagram Stories, she wrote over a black background, “Oh, Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker. Thanks for the laugh and the threat.”
In a since-deleted video posted on her Instagram Stories, Gomez seemingly shared a few words reacting to the recent deportations that have been occurring in the U.S. In text laid over the video, she wrote, “I’m sorry” and an emoji of the Mexican flag.
“All my people are getting attacked, the children,” she said in the video. “I don’t understand. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”
In a follow-up post, she wrote over a black background, “Apparently it’s not ok to show empathy for people.”
The “Calm Down” musician’s post came one day after 956 people were arrested in a nationwide immigration crackdown — the most since Trump took office on Jan. 20, per Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), via the BBC. There were 956 reported arrests on Sunday, 286 arrests on Saturday and 593 arrests on Friday, according to the outlet.
Per the Migration Policy Institute via the BBC, former President Joe Biden executed 1.5 million deportations during his first four years — numbers which “mirror the deportation numbers in Trump’s first term.”
Gomez, who previously produced the Netflix docuseries Living Undocumented, which centered on the lives of undocumented families in the United States, has been outspoken in her advocacy for immigration, especially as her family had experiences with it.
In an emotional op-ed for Time in October 2019, she shared that her aunt “was the first out of her family to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S. in the back of a truck in the 1970s.” According to the singer, her “grandparents followed” and her “father was born in Texas soon after.”
“Undocumented immigration is an issue I think about every day, and I never forget how blessed I am to have been born in this country thanks to my family and the grace of circumstance,” she wrote in the op-ed.
The Only Murders in the Building star noted that her story wasn’t the norm, and shared while watching footage about the eight subjects in Living Undocumented, “When I read the news headlines or see debates about immigration rage on social media, I feel afraid for those in similar situations. I feel afraid for my country.”
