Following Selena Gomez posting a tearful video about President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, the “Emilia Perez” star is slamming Republican politician Sam Parker, who said she should be deported.
Parker, a 2018 Senate candidate from Utah, publicly criticized the “Calm Down” singer, writing on his personal X account, “Deport Selena Gomez.”
“Oh, Mr. Parker, Mr. Parker. Thanks for the laugh and the threat,” the 32-year-old musician responded on her Instagram Stories.
The post comes after Gomez, a descendent of Mexican immigrants, shared an emotional video reacting to Trump’s recent immigration crackdown and the deportations taking place across the U.S.
“All my people are getting attacked, the children,” she tearfully said in the since-deleted video. “I don’t understand. 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.”
In a follow-up post after receiving backlash, Gomez wrote, “Apparently it’s not OK to show empathy for people.”
Gomez has been outspoken about her advocacy for immigration, even producing a 2019 Netflix docuseries on the topic, titled “Living Undocumented.” The series followed the lives of eight families who were on the verge of being deported.
That same year, Gomez penned an emotional op-ed for Time, in which she opened up about her own family sharing that her aunt “was the first out of her family to cross the border from Mexico into the U.S. in the back of a truck in the 1970s.”
“Undocumented immigration is an issue I think about every day,” she wrote in the op-ed. “I never forget how blessed I am to have been born in this country thanks to my family and the grace of circumstance.”
