News : Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong tells ICE to “fuck off” in support of LA protestors

Green Day‘s Billie Joe Armstrong has taken to social media to show solidarity with the Los Angeles residents protesting ongoing the ongoing ICE operations in the city.

The protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department’s operations began on Friday (June 6) and carried on through Sunday (8). They saw numerous people stage a peaceful demonstration, campaigning against ICE’s raids of several workplaces in Los Angeles for alleged immigration violations.

President Donald Trump authorised the deployment of the National Guard in response, with the National Guard being allowed to carry out anti-protest operations over the next 60 days.

In an Instagram post shared Sunday (June 8), Armstrong shared clips of the protests, including a burning self-driving car. Soundtracking the footage to Green Day’s ‘Fuck Off’, his caption include two emojis, a middle finger next to an ice cube.

Fans said the 2024 track it was the “perfect song for what’s going on right now”, with one commenting underneath the post: “Thank you so much for consistently being on the right side of history, Billie Joe Armstrong!”

He joins Finneas in publicly decrying ICE, after the singer also took to Instagram to say: “Fuck ICE.” A follow-up post saw him repost a message to National Guard and military personnel who do not wish to partake in Trump’s order. “If you are National Guard or Active Duty military and you are being ordered to violate the Constitutional rights of US citizens then this is the number to the GI Rights Hotline. There is support, you don’t have to go through with it,” he wrote.

Later on, he posted the following on his story: “Tear gassed almost immediately at the very peaceful protest downtown – they’re inciting this.” He also shared a post from Tim Heidecker that reads: “If you are into this fascist shit you are small and weak and will lose.”

The initially peaceful protests have turned more intense and violent following the National Guard’s involvement, with police cars being set on fire, and rocks and more being thrown. This morning (June 9), CNN reported that around 60 people were arrested in San Francisco after protests outside an Immigration Services building turned violent.

As for Green Day, Armstrong and co. have long been vocal critics of Trump and his policies. Back at the American Music Awards (AMA) in 2016, the band led a chant of “No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA”, and went on to announce a limited-time sale of a t-shirt featuring Trump‘s mugshot for charity in 2023.

In the lead-up to last year’s US Presidential elections, Armstrong had urgently encouraged fans to vote for Kamala Harris instead: “Vote for Harris. I think there’s probably a lot of things that people disagree with, but the one thing that we do agree on, is Trump has got to go and we need to turn the page.”

During live sets, ‘American Idiot’ has often been used to called out Donald Trump’s administration by swapping out the lyric “I’m not a part of the redneck agenda” to “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda“. The band have done this numerous times, dating back to late 2023.