One day after lambasting ICE in a new song titled “Streets of Minneapolis,” Bruce Springsteen has followed it up with a powerful lyric video featuring footage of the ongoing protests against the agency’s immigration enforcement operations in the city.
In the visual posted Thursday (Jan. 29), footage of the Boss — visibly passionate as he sings the emotional lyrics — recording the protest track in the studio is interspersed between videos of the chaos unfolding in Minnesota. In addition to clips of ICE officers forcefully pushing and tackling people on the snowy streets, the video includes snippets of Minnesotans flooding the roads with posters calling for ICE to leave the city.
“Now they say they’re here to uphold the law/ But they trample on our rights/ If your skin is black or brown, my friend/ You can be questioned or deported on sight,” Springsteen sings. “In our chants of ‘ICE out now’/ Our city’s heart and soul persists/ Through broken glass and bloody tears/ On the streets of Minneapolis.”
Springsteen is just one of numerous stars who have condemned ICE in recent weeks, echoing outrage all across the country over the killings of two Minnesota citizens in January. First, agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good, a few weeks after which a different ICE officer shot and killed Alex Pretti. The Donald Trump administration has maintained that the officers in both instances were acting out of self-defense, but videos taken by witnesses have contradicted those claims in the eyes of many Americans.
“If you believe in the power of law and that no one stands above it, if you stand against heavily armed masked federal troops invading an American city, using gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens, if you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, then send a message to this president,” Springsteen said at a Jan. 17 concert in New Jersey, one week before Pretti was killed. “As the mayor of the city [Jacob Frey] said: ICE should get the f—k out of Minneapolis.”
“Streets of Minnesota” is one of the most politically charged songs the rock icon has ever released. In a statement about the track, Springsteen explained that he’d written it in response to “the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis.”
Watch Springsteen’s lyric video for “Streets of Minneapolis” below.
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