FINNEAS Defends Billie Eilish After Anti-ICE Grammys Speech

Summary:

• Billie Eilish wins Song of the Year, slams ICE at Grammys, sparking backlash and debate on stolen land acknowledgment.

• Eilish’s comments on immigration enforcement and stolen land trigger online debate and backlash, with FINNEAS also responding to critics.

• Critics question Eilish’s use of “stolen land” and demand a response, while FINNEAS defends their right to speak out.

On Feb. 1, Billie Eilish won Song of the Year for “Wildflower” at the 68th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles and used her acceptance speech to speak out against Immigration and Customs Enforcement, telling the room, “No one is illegal on stolen land,” before ending with “F— ICE.”

The remarks landed in a Grammy telecast already threaded with protest energy, including other winners calling out ICE and urging empathy for immigrants.

Then came the backlash.

Eilish’s remarks addressed two subjects that have been central to recent public debate.

ICE and immigration enforcement.
Eilish criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency that has faced sustained scrutiny from civil rights groups and lawmakers over detention practices, deportations, and conditions in migrant facilities. Her comments echoed broader criticism of federal immigration enforcement that has surfaced in protests and policy debates in recent years.

Use of the phrase “stolen land.”
Eilish also referred to the United States as “stolen land,” language commonly used in Indigenous land acknowledgments to describe the historical displacement of Native peoples. Following the speech, critics questioned the use of the phrase by wealthy public figures, while others noted it reflects established terminology used in educational and activist contexts.

That’s where the internet did what it does. Critics pointed to the fact that Los Angeles sits on Indigenous land and demanded a gotcha-style response: If you say “stolen land” on TV, do you give up your house?

Parade reported that a Tongva organization confirmed Eilish’s home sits on their ancestral territory, while also emphasizing that Eilish has not contacted them directly and that public conversations should name the Tongva explicitly so people understand who the land acknowledgment is actually about. (

Parade also reported a Los Angeles law firm posted that it was “offering to evict Billie Eilish from her Los Angeles home on a pro bono basis on behalf of the Tongva Tribe,” later framing the move as “satirical.”

FINNEAS, Eilish’s brother and longtime collaborator, is responding because the backlash is not just about one speech. It’s about who gets to speak, who gets policed for speaking, and how fast political outrage gets manufactured into content.

In a Threads post cited by Entertainment Weekly and People, he took aim at what he described as “very powerful old white men” furious about his sister’s remarks, adding: “We can literally see your names in the Epstein files.”

He also pushed back on the “celebs should stay out of politics” line by calling out the contradiction: if celebrity opinions do not matter, why do critics keep demanding airtime to rage about them?

And then he posted again, this time in an Instagram Story that framed the backlash as a symptom, not a surprise. The quote circulating alongside the discourse reads:

“As far as I am concerned, all of this attention and backlash is just part of the death rattle of the current ruling class.
You can only be punished for being on the right side of history in the short term.”