On Monday morning, Selena Gomez posted (and quickly deleted) a video of her crying to her Instagram Story. “I just want to say that I’m so sorry. All my people are getting attacked,” Gomez said through tears. “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.” The post was captioned “I’m sorry” with the Mexican flag emoji.
Over the weekend, ICE immigration raids took place in cities like Newark, Miami, Austin, and Chicago. According to ICE’s own statistics, 956 arrests were made on Sunday alone. This is, presumably, why Gomez (a Mexican American woman whose paternal grandparents were undocumented) was crying. In a follow-up post that has also been deleted, Gomez wrote, “Apparently it’s not okay to show empathy for people.”
The Washington Post reports that Trump officials have now issued arrest quotas to ICE, asking them to arrest “at least 1,200 to 1,500” people per day. ICE officials told the Post that this order will “significantly increase the chance that officers will engage in more indiscriminate enforcement tactics or face accusations of civil rights violations.”
Gomez has long been an advocate for undocumented immigrants. In 2019, she produced the documentary Living Undocumented and wrote a personal essay for Time about the immigration crisis. In it, she wrote, “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.”