Selena Gomez’s Deleted Post Becomes a Political Talking Point
Steven Kurutz, New York Times, January 28, 2025
On Monday, a day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement that it had made 956 arrests as part of President Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the actress and singer Selena Gomez posted an Instagram video to her 422 million followers in which she discussed the situation while crying.
She has since deleted the original post, but its short run online created quite a stir, with Mr. Trump’s “border czar” and numerous political commentators weighing in. One of the commentators called for Ms. Gomez, who was born in Texas, to be deported.
Immigration is a subject personal to Ms. Gomez, a star of the television show “Only Murders in the Building” and the Oscar-nominated film “Emilia Pérez.” In 2019, she wrote an essay for Time magazine in which she reflected on being the granddaughter of undocumented immigrants from Mexico who eventually gained U.S. citizenship. Her aunt, she said, crossed the border hidden in the back of a truck. Her father was born in the United States.
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In 2017, Ms. Gomez was an executive producer on the Netflix documentary “Living Undocumented,” which looked at the lives of eight families living in the United States. {snip}
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Ms. Gomez, sitting in a beige-colored room and looking into the camera, said, “All my people are getting attacked, the children.” She was visibly distraught; her face appeared red from crying and her voice broke as she spoke. Wiping away tears, she added, “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.” Ms. Gomez’s video was captioned with the words, “I’m sorry” next to a Mexican flag emoji.
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After her post, Ms. Gomez was immediately hit with a great deal of negative feedback on all social media platforms, which she acknowledged in her Instagram stories. “Apparently it’s not ok to show empathy for people,” she wrote in a follow-up post that was also deleted.
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