How Maremoto Coordinated 30+ Celebrities for the Grammys ICE Out Campaign
At the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, dozens of music’s biggest stars transformed the ceremony into an organized protest against ICE. Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, Justin and Hailey Bieber, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and more than thirty other artists wore “ICE Out” pins and delivered pointed statements against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. The campaign reached an estimated 15-20 million television viewers in the United States alone—much larger than any traditional protest could achieve.
Behind this celebrity protest stood Maremoto, a Latino advocacy group that spent weeks coordinating what became one of the most visible political statements in awards show history. Working with groups like the ACLU, National Domestic Workers Alliance, and Working Families Power, Maremoto’s executive director Jess Morales Rocketto organized a campaign that balanced careful planning with letting people speak in their own voices.
The Campaign That Took Over the Grammys
The protest happened in several ways. The primary tool was a pins campaign featuring two distinct designs: “ICE Out” and “BE GOOD”—the latter honoring Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both killed by ICE officers in the weeks before the ceremony. Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three, was shot while sitting in her car on January 7. Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was tackled and shot at least ten times on January 30—days before the Grammy Awards.
Organizers distributed pins at pre-Grammy events, parties, and directly to celebrities and their teams. “These pins are about so much more than a red carpet moment,” Rocketto told the media. “It’s about people taking a stand and doing what they can to show up to say that ICE should be out of our communities.”
The ACLU said artists including Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Justin and Hailey Bieber, Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell, Olivia Rodrigo, Lady Gaga, Kehlani, Becky G, Brandi Carlile, Dave Grohl, Samara Joy, Rhiannon Giddens, and Bon Iver wore protest pins throughout Grammy Week. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver wore a whistle instead of a pin—honoring legal observers documenting federal agents’ actions on Minneapolis streets.
When Bad Bunny won Best Música Urbana Album, he gave a speech that put politics first. “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say: ICE out,” he announced to a standing ovation. He continued: “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.”
He then shifted to talk about the emotional toll of the political moment: “The hate gets more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So please, we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love. We don’t hate them, we love our family.”
When Billie Eilish won Song of the Year for “Wildflower,” she used the platform to connect immigration and Indigenous sovereignty issues. “As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything except that no one is illegal on stolen land,” she stated. The statement drew thunderous applause and immediately began circulating on social media.
Kehlani gave perhaps the clearest statement. After thanking her mother and collaborators, she stated: “What I wanna make sure that I say is that everybody is so powerful in this room. And together, we’re stronger in numbers to speak against all the injustice going on in the world right now. So instead of letting it be a couple of you here and there, I hope everybody’s inspired to join together as a community of artists and speak out against what’s going on.” She then concluded: “F*** ICE.”
Justin and Hailey Bieber walked together in coordinated black ensembles—Justin in a Balenciaga suit, Hailey in an Alaïa dress—with both prominently displaying white “ICE Out” pins. Seeing multiple celebrities in dark formal wear with bright white protest pins created a striking look that photographed well for broadcast media and social platforms.
The Organizers Behind the Campaign
Maremoto grew out of both immigrant rights activism and Democratic Party organizing over multiple decades. The organization’s name “Maremoto” means “tsunami” in Spanish, and it operates as a Latino advocacy group focused on helping Latino communities gain more political influence.
Jess Morales Rocketto brought significant experience in progressive political organizing to the Grammy campaign. Her career included jobs as Director of Civic Engagement for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Executive Director of Care in Action, and Co-Chair of the Families Belong Together Coalition, where she directed advocacy around the Trump administration’s family separation policies during his first term. She was also a co-founder of Poderistas, a Latina women’s political organization, and worked previously for the DNC, AFL-CIO, Obama for America, and the New Organizing Institute.
The “ICE Out” and “BE GOOD” pins were endorsed by a coalition of leaders and organizations including the ACLU, Maremoto, National Domestic Workers Alliance, and Working Families Power. Nelini Stamp, national organizing director of Working Families Power, served as a key collaborator. Stamp, herself an experienced activist with roots in Occupy Wall Street, worked with Morales Rocketto in the days leading up to the ceremony to coordinate messaging, distribute pins, and reach out to celebrities.
“We need every part of civil society to speak up,” Stamp said ahead of the ceremony. “We need our artists. We need our entertainers. We need the folks who reflect society.”
The coalition reflected a deliberate strategy of combining different types of advocacy organizations. The ACLU brought expertise on legal rights and freedoms. The National Domestic Workers Alliance brought experience organizing immigrant workers. Working Families Power brought election and grassroots organizing experience. And Maremoto brought specific Latino community relationships and cultural understanding.
Celebrity Recruitment
Morales Rocketto and her team worked directly with celebrities they knew personally or through political networks, while also using relationships with entertainment industry allies and activists working inside the industry.
Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, brought entertainment industry connections from previous campaigns, having walked the red carpet with Meryl Streep at the 2018 Golden Globes for the Time’s Up movement. The 2018 Golden Globes activism—when celebrities wore black in solidarity with #MeToo and Time’s Up—showed it could be done.
Rocketto described the logistical challenges: “Maybe the design house that did their fashion deal for the red carpet didn’t want them to poke holes in the dress. There’s like a million reasons for people not to do it.” Record companies, managers, corporate partners, fashion houses, and broadcast standards all made it harder for celebrities to make political statements.
Despite these obstacles, organizers achieved remarkable scale. They reported stronger participation at the Grammys than at the previous month’s Golden Globes, where similar “ICE Out” pins had also circulated.
The Strategy
Rather than asking celebrities to attend a protest or march, organizers designed something that worked within the existing setup of the Grammy Awards broadcast while using that platform for political purposes.
The physical pin campaign did several things at once. Pins created a tangible object that could be distributed, worn, photographed, and circulated on social media that the broadcast couldn’t control. Unlike speeches, which studios could theoretically edit or control, pins were visible on bodies and could be captured by photographers, fan accounts, and media outlets continuously throughout Grammy Week and the ceremony.
The pins’ design—small white badges with black text—created visual consistency while remaining small enough to potentially avoid conflicts with fashion designers and stylists. By designing the pins to work across diverse participants and clothing types, organizers solved a problem common in coordinated protests: looking too uniform can make it feel fake, while too much variety can weaken the message.
Organizers provided core talking points and consistent messages—”ICE Out,” appeals to community solidarity, describing their opposition as about human dignity rather than partisan politics—while allowing individual participants to customize their expressions. Bad Bunny’s emphasis on love over hate, Billie Eilish’s connection to Indigenous sovereignty, Kehlani’s explicit anti-ICE language, and Justin Vernon’s focus on legal observers all communicated consistent core messaging while reflecting each artist’s authentic voice and political commitments.
Timing and Media Strategy
Rather than organizing a separate protest outside or before the Grammys, organizers operated within the Grammy Awards’ existing framework, using the ceremony’s audience to spread their message. Acceptance speeches, red carpet moments, and backstage interviews all became ways to spread their political message, reaching the 15-20 million people watching the television broadcast.
The timeline—distributing pins in the days and weeks before the ceremony, building media anticipation, coordinating among participants—maximized suspense and media coverage.
Organizers operated across multiple simultaneous media channels. The broadcast television audience on CBS represented the largest single reach, but they also used social media strategies, entertainment media relationships, and coordination with activist media outlets. Entertainment journalists and publications including Variety, Billboard, Hollywood Reporter, and Elle received background briefings on the campaign and its significance.
This advance work meant that when the campaign happened during the live broadcast, media outlets had already prepared analysis and context pieces, getting deeper coverage instead of surface-level “celebrities wore pins” reporting.
Does Celebrity Activism Work?
By normal standards, the campaign reached an extraordinary number of people. Social media spread the message much further—Grammy-related content generated approximately 2.3 million social media mentions per day during peak award season, with specific moments like Bad Bunny’s acceptance speech and Billie Eilish’s “stolen land” statement trending across multiple platforms. News coverage extended far beyond entertainment media, with mainstream outlets including CNN, national newspapers, and broadcast networks covering the activism as a significant cultural and political moment.
This reach vastly exceeded what organizers could achieve through traditional protest tactics. Tens of millions of Americans who might never attend a political rally or march were exposed to anti-ICE messaging and immigration rights advocacy through Grammy coverage.
A main goal was to normalize opposition to ICE enforcement within mainstream American culture—to move “ICE Out” from a fringe activist position to a position held by mainstream cultural figures. Following the Grammy Awards, other celebrities continued making anti-ICE statements across platforms. Organizers demonstrated that supporting anti-ICE positions could go along with mainstream celebrity status and major brand partnerships, potentially making it less risky for entertainers to speak out in the future.
However, conservative media outlets and anti-immigration advocacy groups called it a politically motivated attack on legitimate law enforcement and border security, arguing that mainstream celebrities were being manipulated into expressing fringe positions.
The Performative Activism Critique
The campaign also faced criticism about whether it was effective and authentic. Critics from immigrant rights movements questioned whether pin-wearing and television speeches by wealthy celebrities was meaningful activism versus “performative activism” that substituted visible gestures for real commitments.
The critique highlighted that while Grammy participants gained media visibility for wearing pins, immigrants themselves faced ICE raids, detention, and deportation without equivalent visibility or protection. Some progressive activists argued it might pull attention away from grassroots organizing and direct help.
Research on whether celebrity activism works shows mixed results about long-term effectiveness. Studies examining whether celebrity activism achieves policy change, changed attitudes, or helped movements grow show mixed results. Research shows that celebrities generate extraordinarily high media coverage relative to politicians or policy experts making similar claims. A single statement from an A-list celebrity can get more media coverage than months of advocacy by policy organizations, though this media attention doesn’t automatically change what people think, shift voting behavior, or produce policy outcomes.
The Grammy Awards occur once annually. Briefly interrupting the broadcast doesn’t lead to ongoing attention for immigration issues. News cycles move rapidly, and by February 3-4, other stories had already begun replacing the Grammy activism from headlines.
Historical Precedents
Perhaps the most relevant historical comparison is Sacheen Littlefeather’s acceptance of Marlon Brando’s Best Actor Oscar on March 27, 1973, declining the award to protest Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans and to draw attention to the Wounded Knee occupation. Littlefeather read a statement explaining Brando’s refusal, citing “the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry” and “recent happenings at Wounded Knee,” referencing the ongoing standoff between federal authorities and members of the American Indian Movement.
The moment became immediately controversial, with portions of the Academy Awards audience booing Littlefeather. In the immediate aftermath, the gesture generated enormous media attention and helped make people more aware of Native American rights issues that had previously received limited mainstream attention. Over subsequent decades, Littlefeather’s moment became iconic in American protest history. Yet it’s unclear whether Brando’s refusal directly contributed to policy changes benefiting Native Americans.
The history of athlete activism provides additional precedent. Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be drafted during the Vietnam War, Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem beginning in 2016, and other athlete activism moments demonstrated that individual performers could mobilize vast audiences through high-visibility moments during major sporting and cultural events.
Kaepernick’s kneeling resembles the Grammy campaign’s structure: a symbolic gesture repeated across multiple participants in high-visibility moments designed to raise consciousness about systemic racism without disrupting the basic event. Kaepernick faced severe retaliation, including apparent blacklisting from the NFL, yet his activism helped make political speech in sports more normal, inspired subsequent activism, and kept police brutality and racial justice issues in the public eye.
Activism at award shows has become increasingly normalized since the Trump presidency began in 2017. At the 2018 Golden Globes, nearly all attendees wore black in solidarity with the #MeToo movement and Time’s Up initiatives. While some criticized the gesture as performative, it contributed to visible cultural support for sexual harassment survivors and women in entertainment, and happened at the same time as increased investigations and prosecutions of high-profile accused harassers.
The 2018 Globes activism set an example: award shows could become activist platforms, and celebrity participation in coordinated political messaging was acceptable to major studios, networks, and the entertainment industry. The 2026 Grammy campaign operated within this framework, using tactics that worked at the 2018 Globes on a different issue and involving even greater coordination.
What Happens Next
Following the Grammy Awards, organizers indicated plans to continue the “ICE Out” and “BE GOOD” pin campaign through remaining awards season events, including the Oscars and BAFTAs. Activists began circulating updated versions of the pins incorporating additional names of people killed by ICE agents, expanding who they were honoring beyond Renee Good and Alex Pretti to include the broader pattern of ICE enforcement fatalities.
Congressional Democratic members referenced the Grammy activism when debating funding for immigration enforcement. Republican members pushed back by emphasizing ICE’s law enforcement function and criticizing what they called entertainment industry activism on behalf of undocumented immigrants.
The Trump administration and its DHS representatives responded by saying they’re committed to immigration enforcement and criticizing what they characterized as entertainment industry support for illegal immigration. A particular flashpoint involved Bad Bunny’s scheduled appearance as headliner for Super Bowl LX halftime show on February 9, one week after the Grammy Awards. Department of Homeland Security advisor Cory Lewandowski suggested that ICE agents would be present in extensive numbers at the Super Bowl venue, in what many saw as a threat meant to intimidate Bad Bunny or his audience.
Within immigrant rights movements, debates emerged about whether the Grammy campaign’s focus on celebrity visibility was the best strategy for the movement. Some grassroots organizers expressed concern that media attention to celebrity activism was pulling attention away from community organizing and direct help to immigrants facing enforcement. Others defended it, arguing that making mainstream culture more accepting of anti-ICE positions laid the groundwork for policy change.
The campaign’s long-term significance will depend on whether it was a one-time thing or sparked ongoing action. Historical precedent suggests that single award show moments, while generating significant visibility, require continued organizing and changes to institutions to lead to policy results.
The Grammy campaign permanently altered both the world of awards show activism and the position of immigration enforcement within American entertainment and political culture. Entertainment industry figures have now positioned themselves against ICE operations and set an example for future coordinated activism around immigration issues. The organizing networks built through this campaign—relationships between celebrity participants and advocacy organizations, demonstrated ability to get dozens of major artists involved, established tactics and ways of talking about the issue—will likely persist and influence future activism.
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