White House Used Ariana Grande's Song 'Bye' in an ICE Detention Video. She Told Them to Stop.

What Happened

On Tuesday, June 9, the official White House TikTok account posted a video montage of ICE agents handcuffing people, loading them into vehicles, and placing them in detention facilities. The soundtrack was Grande's 2024 song "Bye." The caption read: "Bye-bye 👋 President Trump has delivered the most secure border in history."

Grande commented Thursday: "Please do not ever use my music in relation to this barbaric, inhumane, heinous nonsense." According to the Los Angeles Times, she also added an unprintable two-word opinion of ICE.

The comment was subsequently deleted or hidden from the video's replies, and the audio was muted, according to the BBC, CBC News, and the LA Times. Multiple other users then commented noting that Grande's reply had disappeared.

The White House Response

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson replied to Grande's comment in an emailed statement to the LA Times: "We'll say this one last time: what's actually barbaric, inhumane, and heinous are the criminal illegal aliens who have injured and murdered innocent American citizens."

This is a substantive policy argument, not just a celebrity clap-back. The White House signed a bill into law last month approving more than $70 billion in new funding for immigration agencies covering the remaining two-and-a-half years of Trump's term, according to BBC News. The administration is not hiding what it's doing. It's explicitly promoting it.

This Is a Deliberate Strategy

Grande's frustration is real, but The Guardian makes a well-sourced point: the White House appears to be doing this on purpose.

When Variety asked the White House for comment about its use of Taylor Swift's music in a November 2025 video, the administration replied: "We made this video because we knew fake news media brands like Variety would breathlessly amplify them. Congrats, you got played."

R&B artist SZA, whose music was also used without her consent, called it what it is: "White House rage baiting artists for free promo is PEAK DARK."

The cycle is mechanical at this point. The White House uses a pop song. The artist objects publicly. Every entertainment outlet runs the story. The administration's immigration message reaches an audience it would never otherwise touch. The artists are not wrong to object. They're also, as SZA noted, feeding the machine.

The Strongest Counterargument

Some will argue that these artists are overstating their case. ICE is a federal law enforcement agency enforcing laws passed by Congress. The video shows arrests, not violence. Describing deportation enforcement as "barbaric" and "inhumane" is a political position, not a factual description, and one that many Americans — including the roughly 77 million who voted for Trump in 2024 — explicitly reject.

The White House's core rejoinder, that criminal illegal immigrants have harmed and killed American citizens, is not fiction. Names like Laken Riley are real. The policy debate is legitimate.

At the same time, objecting to the unauthorized use of your creative work in government propaganda is a straightforward property-rights argument. You don't have to agree with Grande's politics to agree that she gets to decide where her music appears. Those are two separate questions, and conflating them helps nobody.

A Long, Unresolved Pattern

Grande joins a roster that now includes Sabrina Carpenter, SZA, Jess Glynne, Kenny Loggins, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, and Bruce Springsteen, among others. The LA Times also documents a cease-and-desist from Beyoncé's team after the Trump campaign used "Freedom" in a social media post during the 2024 campaign.

The legal question keeps coming up and keeps going unanswered. According to CBC News, some legal experts say artists have the right to challenge the use of their music even when a campaign or government entity holds a blanket performance license. Those licenses typically don't cover synchronization rights (pairing a song with video) or imply endorsement. The White House has never publicly addressed the synchronization-rights argument.

A source close to Grande told CBC News that her team is actively looking into how to have the music removed from the video. Whether that effort reaches a courtroom or whether this just cycles out of the news in 72 hours like the dozen incidents before it is the one thing none of the sources can answer.