Billie Eilish’s brother Finneas has claimed that he was tear-gassed by the National Guard at a ‘very peaceful’ protest in Los Angeles.
The singer-songwriter, 27, took to social media to detail his experience, sharing his message to more than four million followers on Instagram.
‘Tear gassed almost immediately at the very peaceful protest downtown – they’re inciting this,’ he wrote.
The musician had attended a protest against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department’s operations in Los Angeles over the weekend.
The protests, which began on Friday and carried on through until Sunday, 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.
On Sunday, Finneas wrote on an Instagram Story: ‘F**k ICE.’
His next 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.’
Several celebrities have banded together to criticise ICE and the military reaction to protests across Los Angeles, including Eva Longoria and Chrissy Teigen.
On X, Longoria shared a post from California Governor Gavin Newsom, which criticises Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over his threat to deploy active-duty Marines in response to the protests.
Newsom described the threat as ‘deranged behaviour,’ while Longoria added that it was ‘Un-American’ while also sharing a video of a woman being separated from her child during an ICE raid.
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Teigen shared various posts in support of the protests on her Instagram Stories, including a link to a mass protest on June 14.
Massive raids are underway in major cities across the US as part of Trump’s pledge to arrest 3,000 suspected illegal immigrants per day.
One in Los Angeles descended into chaos, as counterprotests led to multiple arrests, allegedly without warrants.
Two Home Depot stores, a clothing shop called Ambient Apparel, and other locations were raided by ICE agents in the predominantly Latino city of Paramount.
The President issued an executive order, posted to the White House website, outlining Trump’s plan to prevent undocumented immigrants from ‘invading’ communities and costing state and local governments.
And a policy which previously restricted officers’ abilities to arrest undocumented immigrants at ‘sensitive’ locations, such as schools, churches and hospitals, was rolled back.
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