28-01-2025
Selena Gomez Claps Back at Republican Political Candidate Who Said She Should Be Deported
After Selena Gomez posted an emotional response to the Donald Trump administration's recent immigration raids, a user identifying as politician Sam Parker called for her to be deported in a post on X — but the singer-actress isn't fazed.
On Instagram Stories, Gomez dismissed the Utah Republican — who Ballotopedia says ran unsuccessfully for United States Senate in 2018 — by writing, according to People, 'Oh, Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker.'
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'Thanks for the laugh and the threat,' the Rare Beauty founder added in the post, which has since disappeared from her Story.
Billboard has reached out to Gomez's rep for comment.
The Only Murders in the Building star's words come in response to Parker taking to X to call on the U.S. government to 'Deport Selena Gomez' after she posted a video on her Story Monday (Jan. 27) of herself crying over the arrests of nearly 1,000 people deemed to be national security threats by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the weekend. 'All my people are getting attacked, the children,' Gomez said in the clip through sobs. '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.'
The Texas-born star later deleted the video from her Story and wrote, 'Apparently it's not ok to show empathy for people,' according to People.
Also on Monday, Trump-appointed border czar Tom Homan slammed Gomez for her video. When asked by Fox News for his reaction to her post, the officer said, 'We got a half a million children who were sex trafficked into this country, separated from their families, put in the hands of criminal cartels to be smuggled into the country — Where's the tears for them?'
Gomez has long been a strong advocate for the immigrant community. In 2019, she produced the Netflix docuseries Living Undocumented, which told the stories of eight families who faced potential deportation under the first Trump administration. She's also spoken about how immigration has shaped her own family's history, detailing how her aunt and grandparents crossed the Mexican border to start their lives in the U.S. before she was born in a 2019 essay for Time.
'Over the past four decades, members of my family have worked hard to gain United States citizenship,' she wrote at the time. 'Undocumented immigration is an issue I think about every day, and I never forget how blessed I am to have been born in this country thanks to my family and the grace of circumstance.'
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