Selena Gomez responds to a Republican politician who suggested she should be deported following a tearful video of her with the Mexican flag.
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This comes just a day after Gomez posted a tearful video in which she expressed, “All my people are getting attacked, the children… I wish I could do something but I can’t.”
Selena Gomez fired back at Republican politician Sam Parker, who suggested she should be deported after she shared an emotional video that seemed to respond to President Donald Trump’s recent immigration policies.
Parker, a 2018 Republican Senate candidate from Utah, posted “Deport Selena Gomez” on X after criticizing her video. In response, the 32-year-old Emilia Pérez star took to Instagram Stories, writing over a black background, “Oh, Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker. Thanks for the laugh and the threat.”
Earlier, in a now-deleted video on Instagram Stories, Gomez appeared to comment on the ongoing deportations in the U.S., with a message reading “I’m sorry” and an emoji of the Mexican flag.
In the video, Gomez tearfully expressed, “All my people are getting attacked, the children. 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.”
In a follow-up post, she shared a message on a black background that read, “Apparently it’s not ok to show empathy for people.”
The “Calm Down” artist’s post came just a day after 956 people were arrested in a nationwide immigration crackdown—the highest number since Trump took office, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as reported by the BBC. On Sunday, there were 956 arrests, with 286 on Saturday and 593 on Friday.
The Migration Policy Institute, also cited by the BBC, stated that former President Joe Biden oversaw 1.5 million deportations during his first four years, numbers that “mirror the deportation numbers in Trump’s first term.”
Gomez, who produced the Netflix docuseries Living Undocumented, which followed the lives of undocumented families in the U.S., has been a vocal advocate for immigration reform, particularly given her own family’s experiences with it.
In a heartfelt op-ed for Time in October 2019, Selena Gomez revealed that her aunt “was the first out of her family to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S. in the back of a truck in the 1970s.” She explained that her “grandparents followed” and her “father was born in Texas soon after.”
“Undocumented immigration is an issue I think about every day, and I never forget how blessed I am to have been born in this country thanks to my family and the grace of circumstance,” she wrote in the op-ed.
The Only Murders in the Building star emphasized that her experience wasn’t typical, adding that while watching footage about the eight subjects in Living Undocumented, “When I read the news headlines or see debates about immigration rage on social media, I feel afraid for those in similar situations. I feel afraid for my country.”