Photo: ROBYN BECK / AFP / Getty Images
Cardi B and the Department of Homeland Security are in a very public back-and-forth after the Grammy-winning rapper made comments about ICE during the opening night of her Little Miss Drama Tour in Palm Desert, California.
In video circulating online, Cardi told the crowd: “If ICE come in here, we’re gonna jump they asses. I got some bear mace in the back. They ain’t taking my fans, b****. Let’s go!” The comment appeared to be a show of support for immigrant fans amid heightened federal immigration enforcement across the country.
DHS responded by taking a direct swipe at Cardi’s past. In response to TMZ's X post about Cardi's comments, the department tweeted: “As long as she doesn’t drug and rob our agents, we’ll consider that an improvement over her past behavior.” The remark references Cardi’s 2019 admission that, before fame, she robbed men while working as a stripper — something she addressed publicly at the time.
Cardi didn’t let the jab slide. She fired back on X, writing: “If we talking about drugs let’s talk about Epstein and friends drugging underage girls to rape them. Why yall don’t wanna talk about the Epstein files?”
Her response comes amid national attention to the federal handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Epstein, who was charged with sex trafficking minors, died in federal custody in 2019. In November, Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, compelling the Department of Justice to release unclassified records related to the investigation. The bill was signed into law by President Donald Trump. The DOJ has since released millions of pages of redacted documents.
The exchange also comes amid broader scrutiny of ICE enforcement practices. Advocacy groups and civil rights attorneys have raised concerns about racial profiling, aggressive tactics and due process protections in certain operations. Federal law already makes voting by noncitizens illegal and voter fraud extremely rare, but immigration enforcement itself remains a flashpoint in national politics — especially in election years.
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