Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans are American citizens. He will perform at the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, and he said the performance is “for my people, my culture, and our history.”
In response, Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski announced that ICE agents will be deployed to the Super Bowl. “There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally,” Lewandowski said. “Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else. We will find you and apprehend you.”
He called Bad Bunny’s selection “shameful” because the artist “seems to hate America so much.”
Let us be clear about what’s happening here: the federal government is announcing it will use immigration enforcement as a tool of cultural intimidation.
Bad Bunny avoided touring in the United States because he feared ICE would target his concerts and detain his Latino fans. The Trump administration is now proving him right—and calling his fear evidence of anti-Americanism. This is the circular logic of authoritarianism: fear of state targeting becomes justification for state targeting. Cultural expression by minorities becomes grounds for surveillance and enforcement.
This isn’t about immigration law. This is about cultural dominance.
Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl—the single biggest cultural event in America—represents something this administration cannot tolerate: Latino cultural visibility at the absolute center of American life. Latino pride. Latino celebration in a space of maximum cultural power.
So they announce ICE will be there. Not quietly, as routine security. But as a threat. As a message: “You can perform, but your people should be afraid. Because we will be watching. Sorting. Deciding who belongs.”
This is what it looks like when government power becomes a weapon in a culture war. And make no mistake: when the executive branch uses its power to fight a culture war, that is fascism.
The federal government has no business deploying law enforcement to intimidate ethnic minorities at cultural events. The executive branch exists to faithfully execute the laws—not to punish cities that vote wrong, not to suppress cultural pluralism, not to make Latino Americans afraid to gather and celebrate in public.
But this administration is culture war, all the time. That’s the entire project. Not governance, but domination. Use federal power to punish enemies. Use federal agents to enforce cultural hierarchy. Redefine patriotism as loyalty to their vision of America, and treat any assertion of pluralism as a threat requiring force to eliminate.
They want to eliminate cultural pluralism, using fear and force.
They’re not doing this through democratic persuasion or honest argument about what American culture should be. They’re doing it through state violence and the threat of state violence. Through making some Americans afraid while others feel protected. Through treating cultural celebration itself as suspicious, as potentially harboring threats, as requiring state surveillance.
Cultural pluralism requires the security to be different in public. Fear eliminates that security. And when the state deliberately deploys fear against specific cultural groups, it’s not law enforcement—it’s cultural suppression.
This is fascism, wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. Not as historical analogy but as present reality. The use of state violence to suppress cultural pluralism and enforce ethnic hierarchy. The selective suspension of constitutional protections for disfavored groups. The redefinition of patriotism as conformity rather than as constitutional principle.
And here’s what makes it especially insidious: they’ve convinced millions of Americans that this is what “limited government” looks like. That using federal agents to intimidate Latinos at the Super Bowl is defending freedom. That deploying ICE to cultural events is patriotism.
They’ve redefined “limited government” to mean: limited in its ability to serve citizens, unlimited in its ability to punish disfavored groups. Limited in providing healthcare or protecting the environment. Unlimited in deploying force to enforce cultural dominance.
These are not good people. They are reprobates who have exploited cultural resentments to justify absolute power. They don’t care about immigration policy or public safety. They care about dominance—and they’re willing to use every coercive tool of the federal government to achieve it.
Bad Bunny will perform at the Super Bowl. ICE agents will be there, not because of any specific threat, but to send a message. And if you’re not horrified by that, you’ve already accommodated more than you realize.
This is the sufferable evil. How much more will we endure before it becomes insufferable?
So ICE is gonna burst through the stands with their black uniforms and clubs on national TV? Maybe even carrying loaded weapons and rappelling from Black Hawks? Aren't those stadium cameras capable of close-up scanning of the faces in the crowd? I can just imagine live video showing ICE dragging real people with real faces, real personalities, real expressions of pain and horror (brown, white, whatever) out of the stadium. Other spectators of course would be standing in the way (iintentionally or unintentionally), so ICE will commence to laying about with their coshes and rifle butts. Fans will start hitting fans. People will start throwing hot dogs instead of sandwiches.
Of course the regime thinks it can assign its own narrative to such footage, but video will be so widespread, from so many angles; plus so many direct witnesses will be interviewed afterwards that the regime can only be overestimating their persuasive power.
Hopefully this is just a threat from people who are incapable of thinking through consequences that should be obvious at the very same instant that an idea occurs. The whole world will be watching.
Aren't Superbowl tickets really expensive? Is ICE really going to ruin the experience of rich people?