Grande publicly condemned the Trump administration after her song was used without permission in a TikTok video showing ICE agents arresting and handcuffing people.
The White House posted the 14-second clip on TikTok on Tuesday, featuring officers including ICE agents making arrests while Grande’s 2024 song “Bye” played over the footage.
The video was captioned: “Bye-bye President Trump has delivered the most secure border in history,” framing the deportation scenes as a political achievement.
Grande responded directly in the video’s comments section, making her position on the matter unmistakably clear to the administration and her millions of followers.
“Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense. F— ICE,” she wrote in her comment on the post.
Grande’s comment has since been deleted or hidden from the video’s replies, and the sound on the TikTok has been disabled following the backlash.
A source close to Grande confirmed her team is actively looking into how to remove the music from the video as soon as possible.
This is not the first time Grande has publicly opposed the Trump administration’s mass-deportation campaign, which has drawn widespread criticism from artists and civil liberties groups alike.
She was spotted wearing an “ICE OUT” pin at the Golden Globes earlier this year, signalling her opposition to the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda on one of entertainment’s biggest stages.
Grande has also used her considerable platform to post advice and tactics for her millions of followers on how to contact their senators if they witness an ICE deportation taking place in their state.
The Trump administration has developed a pattern of using popular artists’ music in videos celebrating ICE deportations, repeatedly angering musicians and sparking very public disputes.
The incident highlights growing tensions between the entertainment industry and the current administration over both immigration policy and the unauthorised use of copyrighted music in political content.