Cardi B fires back after Homeland Security’s brutal dig: ‘Release the Epstein files’

Cardi B has taken aim at Homeland Security after it criticised her comments encouraging fans to ‘jump ICE’.

The American rapper, who was born and raised in New York City to Dominican and Trinidadian parents, this week issued a warning to President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security if it targeted her fans.

While on stage during the first show of her Little Miss Drama Tour, which kicked off in Palm Desert, California, this week, the 33-year-old told the crowd: ‘If ICE come in here, we’re gonna jump they asses… I got some bear mace in the back. They ain’t taking my fans, b****. Let’s go!’ she declared, before launching into her song I Like It.

After a clip of the moment was shared on social media, it quickly went viral and caught the attention of many, including the government department responsible for immigration enforcement, which ICE falls under.

Re-sharing an article detailing what Cardi B said, the agency’s official account responded on X and wrote: ‘As long as she doesn’t drug and rob our agents, we’ll consider that an improvement over her past behaviour.’

This reply was in reference to the rapper’s previous admission that she had drugged and robbed men while working as a stripper before she became famous.

But not willing to take the criticism from Homeland Security, she hit back and replied on X: ‘If we talking about drugs let’s talk about Epstein and friends drugging underage girls to rape them. Why yall don’t wanna talk about the Epstein files?’

In recent weeks, the Department of Justice has released more than three million files of sex trafficker and paedophile Epstein, with Trump named in the files more than 5,300 times. He has denied any wrongdoing when probed on his links to the late financier.

Meanwhile, despite the President vowing to crack down on immigration, recently released data from The University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project showing that of nearly 220,000 people arrested by ICE between January 20 and October 15 last year, almost one-third of those arrested in that timeframe had no criminal record.

For those who had been convicted in the past, the data doesn’t distinguish between minor offences and violent crimes.

In 2019, a clip resurfaced showing Cardi B – real name Belcalis Almanzar – admitting to drugging and robbing men who wanted to have sex with her while she’d been working as a stripper.

Responding to the video after facing intense backlash, she defended herself and explained: ‘Whether or not they were poor choices at the time, I did what I had to do to survive. I never claimed to be perfect or come from a perfect world.’

The original video, which was from three years prior, had been filmed when her music career had started to take off and saw her responding to someone claiming she didn’t deserve success as she hadn’t put in the hard yards.

‘Nothing was handed to me. Nothing,’ she said in the video, before going on to reveal that she would invite men to a hotel before drugging and robbing them.

Responding to critics, she explained that she’d also been talking ‘about things in my past right or wrong that I felt I needed to do to make a living’.

‘I’m a part of a hip-hop culture where you can talk about where you come from, talk about the wrong things you had to do to get where you are,’ she said, before pointing out there were rappers who ‘glorified murder, violence, drugs and robbing’.

‘I never glorified the things I brought up in that live , I never even put those things in my music because I’m not proud of it and feel a responsibility not to glorify it. I made the choices that I did at the time because I had very limited options,’ she added.

Cardi then went on to share that the men she’d been referring to in the video were ones she dated or was involved with, and had been ‘conscious, willing and aware’.

Earlier this week, Cardi B also appeared on stage during Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny’s ‘uniting’ Super Bowl Halftime Show performance.

Just a week earlier, he’d also addressed ICE’s ongoing raids across the US in two speeches during the Grammys.

Wiping away tears when accepting one award, he said in English: ‘I want to dedicate this award to all the people that had to leave their homeland, their country, to follow their dreams.’

Earlier in the night, after winning best musica urbana album, he also didn’t mince his words. ‘Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say, ICE out,’ he said before receiving a standing ovation.

‘We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans. I know it’s tough to not hate these days. And I was thinking, sometimes we get contaminated. The hate gets more powerful with more hate,’ he continued.

‘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 people. We love our family, and that’s the way to do it – with love.’

Bad Bunny then urged others to ‘not forget that’.

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