The White House has responded to Selena Gomez’s Instagram video where she tearfully reacted to recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids across the country.
On Friday (January 30) the White House posted on X (formerly Twitter) a video of the mothers of those who were allegedly killed by undocumented people. “Kayla Hamilton, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Rachel Morin were murdered by illegal aliens,” they captioned the post.
“Their courageous mothers had something to say to @SelenaGomez and those who oppose securing our borders.”
In the video, the mothers are watching the Rare Beauty founder’s clip from January 27 where she is crying and apologizing for not being able to help.
“Seeing that video, it’s hard to believe that it’s actually genuine and real because she’s an actress,” Alexis Nungaray said in the White House video. “My daughter was a child. There’s many other children whose lives were taken due to people who crossed here illegally.”
“You don’t know who you’re crying for,” Hamilton’s mother Tammy Nobles echoed a similar statement. “What about our children who were brutally murdered and raped and beat to death and left on the floor by these illegal immigrants?”
“I just feel like it’s a ruse to deceive people and to garner sympathy for lawlessness,” Patty Morin said about Gomez’s video.
Studies show that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. -born Americans.
At the time of Gomez’s video, 956 people were arrested across major cities in the U.S. over just three days as a result of President Donald Trump’s new immigration policy.
“I just want to say that I’m so sorry. All my people are getting attacked,” the 32-year-old Mexican American singer cried in a now-deleted post on Instagram. “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,” she concluded, captioning her video, “I’m sorry” with a Mexican flag emoji.
Gomez’s video was met with immediate backlash from Trump’s supporters, who accused her of performative online.
For example, right-wing political host Tomi Lahren called the actor a “certified moron” in a video shared on X. “This is why we don’t take our political advice from Disney child stars,” she wrote.
Sam Parker, a Republican candidate who sought election to the U.S. Senate in 2018, wrote simply: “Deport Selena Gomez.”
The Only Murders in the Building star subsequently deleted the video from her Instagram Story. She then went back online to hit back at the haters, writing: “Apparently it’s not OK to show empathy for people.”
The video came after Trump signed a deluge of executive orders related to immigration due to an “unconscionable risk” to public safety and national security, a White House official said.
Some of Trump’s orders were signed with the aim of expanding ICE’s ability to arrest and detain unlawful migrants in the U.S., including one that rescinded restrictions surrounding immigration raids in areas deemed “sensitive” — including schools.
Back in 2019, Gomez produced an entire documentary entitled Living Undocumented and wrote an essay for Time detailing her family’s history of illegally crossing the border from Mexico into the United States.
Both her Aunt and her paternal grandparents were undocumented for some time. However, according to Gomez’s essay, her family has since “worked hard to gain United States citizenship.”