Upwards of 500 Dominican migrants have been arrested on the island since Trump took office
Bad Bunny may have witnessed an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrest — and it’s fair to say he was not happy. On Tuesday, the Puerto Rican star shared a video of what seems to be ICE officers detaining a group of people in the streets.
“Those motherfuckers are in these cars, RAV-4s,” Bad Bunny says in a video, speaking in Spanish over footage of law enforcement appearing to take some folks into unmarked cars on Avenida Pontezuela in Carolina, Puerto Rico. “They got a bunch of people… Sons of bitches, instead of letting the people alone and working.”
ICE raids have been affecting many immigrant-dominated areas of the continental United States, including Los Angeles. However, in Puerto Rico, around 500 Dominican migrants were arrested in San Juan since Donald Trump took office in January, according to NPR. Many of the arrests have occurred in Barrio Obrero, San Juan’s heart of the Dominican community.
According to data from ICE, 75 percent of those arrested have been Dominican, and less than 80 of the 500 people detained by ICE have any sort of criminal record.
Bad Bunny now joins a long list of music celebrities who have expressed their anger and frustration around the ICE raids affecting immigrants across the country. Katy Perry, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Ivan Cornejo, and Finneas, are among the artists speaking out against the president’s deployment and ICE raids.
Protests took place across the country over the last several weeks in opposition to the tactics the federal government has implemented to target immigrant communities.
Bad Bunny backed Kamala Harris’s campaign for president in late October, supporting her approach to an “opportunity economy” for residents of the island.
