Artists unleash ire on ICE in speeches, but cameras didn't catch these scenes

In speech after speech, this year's Grammy-winning artists returned to one message— ICE is a menace that must be stopped.

- BY JESSICA GELT, MALIA MENDEZ, CERYS DAVIES AND AUGUST BROWN

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times

KEHLANI, with her first Grammys for R&B performance and R&B song, said performers need to advocate for social justice.

After dramatic, violent escalations in federal raids on immigrant communities and their supporters in Minneapolis and across the country, Americans have been shocked into despair and action. Many artists up for top Grammys have been vocal about their opposition to the raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but at Sunday's Grammys, the topic was front and center.

Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish and other Grammy winners used their acceptance speeches to denounce ICE.

"I want to dedicate this to all the people who had to leave their home, their country, to follow their dreams," Bad Bunny said in his mostly-Spanish acceptance speech for the Grammys top prize, album of the year.

Billie Eilish, an upset winner with brother Finneas O'Connell for song of the year for "Wildflower," was even more direct. "No one is illegal on stolen land," she said. "It's hard to know what to say and what to do, but we need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting. Our voices really do matter." Then came a long, bleeped moment on the CBS broadcast — presumably something urgently profane directed at a similar target.

In Trevor Noah's final opening monologue at the Grammys, however, the joke that got the loudest laugh in the room was directed at Nicki Minaj’s MAGA alliance.