On Monday, a day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that it had made 956 arrests as part of President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the actress and singer Selena Gomez posted an Instagram video to her 422 million followers in which she discussed the situation while crying.
She has since deleted the original post, but its short run online created quite a stir, with Mr. Trump’s “border czar” and numerous political commentators weighing in. One of the commentators called for Ms. Gomez, who was born in Texas, to be deported.
Immigration is a subject personal to Ms. Gomez, a star of the television show “Only Murders in the Building” and the Oscar-nominated film “Emilia Pérez.” In 2019, she wrote an essay for Time magazine in which she reflected on being the granddaughter of undocumented immigrants from Mexico who eventually gained U.S. citizenship. Her aunt, she said, crossed the border hidden in the back of a truck. Her father was born in the United States.
“Immigration is a divisive political issue,” Ms. Gomez wrote. “But immigration goes beyond politics and headlines. It is a human issue, affecting real people, dismantling real lives.”
In 2017, Ms. Gomez was an executive producer on the Netflix documentary “Living Undocumented,” which looked at the lives of eight families living in the United States. “I watched footage outlining their deeply personal journeys and I cried,” Ms. Gomez wrote in the Time essay. “It captured the shame, uncertainty and fear I saw my own family struggle with.”
With Mr. Trump quickly fulfilling his campaign promise to ramp up arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants, Ms. Gomez was again moved to tears, this time on social media.
What was her original post?
Ms. Gomez, sitting in a beige-colored room and looking into the camera, said, “All my people are getting attacked, the children.” She was visibly distraught; her face appeared red from crying and her voice broke as she spoke. Wiping away tears, she added, “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.” Ms. Gomez’s video was captioned with the words, “I’m sorry” next to a Mexican flag emoji.
Why did she delete it?
After her post, Ms. Gomez was immediately hit with a great deal of negative feedback on all social media platforms, which she acknowledged in her Instagram stories. “Apparently it’s not ok to show empathy for people,” she wrote in a follow-up post that was also deleted.
What were the reactions to her post?
Thomas D. Homan, the acting director of ICE during Mr. Trump’s first term and current White House “border czar,” took issue with Ms. Gomez’s post. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Mr. Homan suggested that Ms. Gomez’s empathy for deported immigrants was misplaced. “We’ve got a quarter of a million Americans dead from fentanyl coming across an open border. Where’s the tears for them?” Mr. Homan said.
Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative political group Turning Point USA, questioned on X why Ms. Gomez, an American, would identify with the undocumented immigrants rather than her fellow Americans. The political commentator Tomi Lahren said on X, “This is why we don’t take our political advice from Disney child stars.”
Among the most extreme reactions came from Samuel Parker, a Republican who sought to run for the U.S. Senate from Utah in 2018. He wrote a post on X post in which he called Ms. Gomez’s grandparents “illegals,” despite their having been naturalized as U.S. citizens, and said, “Maybe Selena should be deported, too?”
Others took a more measured approach to Ms. Gomez’s tearful message. “This is an issue for some people that is extremely emotional,” Ashley Allison, a CNN political commentator and former staffer in the Obama and Biden administrations, said during a round-table discussion on the network. “I’m not going to demean Selena Gomez because she was emotionally enraged.”
She also received public support from a wide range of prominent people including Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer; the former talk-show host Geraldo Rivera and the rapper Flavor Flav.
Has she responded to the criticism?
Yes. In an Instagram story, Ms. Gomez responded to Mr. Parker, writing, “Oh Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker. Thanks for the laugh and the threat.”
Mr. Parker pinned a screenshot of her message to the top of his X profile.
The post Selena Gomez’s Deleted Post Becomes a Political Talking Point appeared first on New York Times.
