Kid Rock is distancing himself from his own restaurant after it reportedly closed its kitchen to avoid Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
The outspoken MAGA fan’s Big A– Honky Tonk Rock N’Roll Steakhouse was forced to close early on the weekend of May 10 after staff without legal citizenship either didn’t show up for work amid the raids or were sent home early by their managers, according to Nashville Scene.
The closure was noteworthy given that Kid Rock, whose real name is Bob Ritchie, has long been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, who has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to speed up its deportation efforts.
“Clearly I do not have anything to do with day to day operations at my Honky Tonk—but it’s good click bait, I get it,” Kid Rock wrote in a social media post. “That being said I 100% support getting illegal criminals out of our country no matter where they are.”
“I also like President Trump want to speed up the process of getting GREAT immigrants into our country—LEGALLY!” he wrote. “That’s that simple folks. But the below is not a juicy enough headline to get clicks and views… in this day and age the truth often is not.”
The post linked to a Daily Mail article saying, “Kid Rock’s Nashville restaurant next target for Trump’s sweeping ICE raids.”
The story never said that Kid Rock himself hired the workers or told them to go home, but it showed how Trump’s supporters have benefited from immigrants working in their businesses even as the president vowed to enact mass deportations.
Nashville restaurants The Diner and Honky Tonk Central, which, like Kid Rock’s Big A– Honky Tonk, are partly owned by prominent Trump donor Steve Smith, also shut down during raids.
Nashville Scene reported that managers sent employees home, and they did not know if Smith had been consulted. The Daily Beast has contacted a lawyer who has represented Smith for comment.
ICE began conducting nightly traffic stops in South Nashville starting on May 3, leading to at least 196 arrests over the next 10 days, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
“We were already understaffed because of the ICE raids throughout the weekend,” an unnamed employee from one of the restaurants told Nashville Scene. “Then, around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, our manager came back and told anyone without legal status to go home.”
As nearby events let out, the area was “crazy busy,” but “there was no one in the kitchen to cook the food,” the employee said.
The majority of the people arrested during the raids in Nashville didn’t have criminal records, according to DHS.
Kid Rock endorsed Trump during his presidential campaigns, performed at the 2024 Republican National Convention, and even appeared alongside the president at a press conference in the Oval Office in late March during which Trump signed an executive order against ticket scalpers.
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