When your song gets hijacked for a cause you despise, there’s no ambiguity in the response—and Ariana Grande made hers crystal clear on Thursday, June 11.
The White House had used Grande’s track“Bye”in a TikTok video celebrating the passage of the Secure America Act, which funds Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection through September 2029. The clip featured real footage of ICE agents making arrests, paired with a caption reading“Goodbye criminal illegals! The Trump admin will keep fighting to keep America Safe.”But Grande wasn’t about to let that slide. According to her spokesperson, she fired back directly in the comments with a message that left no room for interpretation:“Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense. Fck ice.”
This wasn’t a one-off outburst. Grande has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policies for years, and her team is already working to get the video removed from social media. The White House’s response was equally unsparing. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson told outlets that“what’s actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens.”
The clash reflects a deeper pattern of tension between Grande and Trump officials. Last September, she shared a post from podcaster Matt Bernstein that questioned whether Trump supporters’lives had actually improved under the administration—asking whether groceries got cheaper, whether health insurance premiums dropped, whether people could finally take a vacation. White House official Kush Desai fired back with a statement that took shots at both Grande and her music, referencing her song titles while claiming Trump had“ended Joe Biden’s inflation crisis”and even signed an executive order that led to an FTC crackdown on Ticketmaster.
Grande’s track record of pushback goes deeper still. She’s publicly opposed ICE in the past and questioned how potential immigration violations compared to Trump’s 2024 criminal conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. (Trump has always denied wrongdoing.) In June 2025, she shared a protest sign asking a question that captured her frustration perfectly:“Could someone explain which crimes get you deported and which ones get you elected president? It’s so confusing.”
The irony isn’t lost—a song literally titled“Bye”weaponized for a campaign about removal, only to have its creator weaponize it right back with a four-word rejection that’s already become a rallying cry for her supporters.
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Local Lawton
Local Lawton is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.