White House Adviser Says ICE Agents will Attend the Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show: ‘We Will Deport You

The NFL’s latest halftime choice is making headlines for all the wrong reasons. This year, the league tapped Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny—best known not just for his music, but for his loud opposition to America’s immigration enforcement agencies.

Bad Bunny has never hidden his disdain for ICE. As Breitbart News reported, he once pledged not to perform in the United States at all, calling it too unsafe. “Honest, I can’t risk the safety of my fans like that. Mainland America just doesn’t feel necessary to me anymore,” he said. “I’ve already performed there many times. Fans in the U.S. have had plenty of chances to see me perform live.”

Just last month, he told i-D Magazine he feared immigration enforcement could target his shows: “But there was the issue of — like, fucking ICE could be outside [my concerts]. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about.”

Yet after the NFL gave him the halftime slot, his tone suddenly shifted. In his official statement, Bad Bunny claimed: “What I’m feeling goes beyond myself. It’s for those who came before me and ran countless yards so I could come in and score a touchdown … this is for my people, my culture and our history.”

But while the NFL embraces a performer openly hostile to U.S. law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security is making it clear that the Super Bowl will not be a sanctuary for those here illegally. Corey Lewandowski, an adviser at DHS, told Benny Johnson on Wednesday: “There is nowhere that you can provide safe haven to people in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else. We will find you. We will apprehend you. We will put you in a detention facility, and we will deport you. So know that that is a very real situation under this administration, which is completely contrary to what how it used to be.”

Lewandowski didn’t mince words about the NFL’s choice either. “It’s so shameful that they’ve decided to pick somebody who just seems to hate America so much to represent them at the halftime game,” he said. He also reflected on a different atmosphere when he attended last year’s Super Bowl with President Trump: “I was at the Super Bowl last year with President Trump. I had the chance to be in Louisiana in his box and watch the game, and got to enjoy that. But listen, we should be trying to be inclusive and not exclusive. There are plenty of great bands and entertainment people out there who could be playing at that show that would be bringing people together and not separating them.”

This halftime controversy is about more than music. It shows the widening divide between corporate elites who pander to activist politics, and the millions of ordinary Americans who expect national institutions to respect law, order, and unity. While the NFL tries to score points with cultural posturing, DHS is reminding the country that enforcing immigration law is not optional. The contrast couldn’t be sharper—or more telling.