Bruce Springsteen ripped U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on Saturday during a surprise performance at a New Jersey music festival, telling the agency to “Get the f— out of Minneapolis” and dedicating his song “Promised Land” to slain civilian Renee Good.
“I wrote this song as an ode to American possibility,” Springsteen said from onstage on the last night of the 2026 Light of Day Winterfest at Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey.
“It was about a both beautiful but flawed country, that we are, and the country that we could be. Right now, we are living through incredibly critical times. The United States, the ideals and the values for which it stood for the past 250 years, is being tested as it’s never been in modern times,” he said.
Springsteen argued recent events in Minneapolis, where ICE agents are scooping up immigrants, U.S. citizens and legal U.S. residents alike and holding them in detention or shipping them off without allowing them to communicate, has brought American democracy to a dark place.
“Those values and those ideals have never been as endangered as they are right now,” he told the audience gathered to raise funds for Parkinson’s and other neurological-related diseases.
“So as we gather tonight in this beautiful display of love and care and thoughtfulness and community, if you believe in democracy and liberty and believe the truth still matters, you must speak out and it’s worth fighting for,” he continued. “If you believe in the power of the law and that no one stands above it. If you stand against heavily armed masked federal troops invading an American city, using Gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens. If you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, send a message to this president as the mayor of that city has said, ICE should get the f— out of Minneapolis.”
“This song is for you and the memory of a mother of three, American Renee Good,” Springsteen concluded, breaking out his harmonica.
Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot earlier this month by ICE agent Jonathan Ross as she tried to drive away. U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Krisi Noem labeled her a “domestic terrorist” despite video evidence disproving the accusation.
Springsteen’s antipathy toward Trump dates back years, when the storied musician labeled his 2016 campaign a “con job” and called Trump’s potential to inflict damage “a very dangerous thing.” Springsteen blasted Trump’s “inhuman” immigration border policies in 2018 during his one-man Broadway show and said he is “damaged to his core.”
The rock superstar kept it up this year, calling Trump “treasonous” in remarks launching his European tour in May, and telling Time magazine in September that the president should be consigned to the “trash heap of history.”
