As protests erupt across the country against the Trump administration’s raids and mass arrests of migrants by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), música Mexicana singer Ivan Cornejo showed his support for his community by helping raise funds for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).
“In 1986, my dad was one of the 3 million undocumented immigrants to receive amnesty from Ronald Reagan, allowing him to have legal status in the U.S. President Reagan and other former presidents have recognized the value that immigrants bring to this country,” began Cornejo in his statement posted to social media on Tuesday. “We have and continue to contribute not only economically but culturally and have been doing so forever.”
“America was built on the backs of immigrants like my father, and now we’re being targeted, undermining America’s core values,” continued the singer-songwriter. “Words cannot express the sorrow that I feel for my community. I see my mom, my dad and myself in many of you.”
Cornejo said he was “speechless at the inhumanity that is affecting our Mexican and Hispanic communities.” He added that there have been “closed-door discussions” over whether speaking out has put this team at risk,” because “this administration is not holding back” and “indiscriminately using measures never seen before.”
The artist said that since the launch of his Mirada Tour Parte 2, his team and fans have raised funds for CHIRLA, and linked to its website “where you can learn about your rights and how to get involved.”
“I’m with you during these difficult times, and I will continue to support you all through my art,” said the singer.
Multiple artists including Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Tyler, the Creator, and more have spoken out against President Donald Trump’s ICE raids and deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles over the weekend. While accepting the BET Award for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, Doechii addressed the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, where the Awards were being held. “I feel it’s my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people, for Black people, for Latino people, for trans people, for the people in Gaza,” she said on stage that night. “We all deserve to live in hope and not in fear. And I hope we stand together, my brothers and my sisters, against hate — and we protest against it.”
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Finneas said that he was tear-gassed while at a “peaceful protest” in downtown L.A. on Sunday. “Tear-gassed almost immediately at the very peaceful protest downtown — they’re inciting this,” he wrote in a post included in a series from his Instagram stories. In one from earlier in the day, Finneas wrote, “Fuck ICE.”
The protests spreading throughout the country are pushing back against the inhumane tactics the federal government has implemented to target immigrant communities. In recent weeks, ICE agents have surprised migrants at immigration hearings, taken infants out of their mothers arms while conducting an arrest, and begun carrying out large scale round ups that — by the admission of Trump’s “immigration czar” Tom Homan — arrest migrants without any criminal records.
