Billie Eilish's Brother Makes Shocking Claim About L.A. Protests
Finneas, the older brother and longtime collaborator of , says he was 'tear-gassed' while at the protests in Los Angeles over the weekend.
Finneas (also known as Finneas O'Connell) has not shied away from controversial political messages since becoming famous alongside his sister. Finneas has written and produced music for his sister, including her breakthrough album, When We All Fall Alseep, Where Do We Go? and her Oscar-winning songs 'No Time To Die' and 'What Was I Made For.'
He has also collaborated with a variety of other artists, in addition to his own music. And while Fineas would presumably prefer to use his platform to promote The Favors, his new duo with singer-songwriter Ashe, that wasn't the case on Sunday.
Finneas was reportedly at the protests in his native Los Angeles. It's unclear whether Finneas participated in the demonstrations against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for detaining dozens across Southern California, or if he was an observer.
'Tear gassed almost immediately at the very peaceful protests [in Downtown Los Angeles],' he posted on his Instagram Story, before claiming, 'They're inciting this.'
Finneas also shared many messages in support of the protestors and messages denouncing President Donald Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard.
Billie and Finneas have been politically active for years. In June 2020, the 'Bad Guy' singer attended a Black Lives Matter march in Los Angeles to protest the killing of George Floyd, per The Independent. Billie also spoke out during her 2022 Glastonbury performance following the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, per the BBC. In 2024, Billie shared a bold political message for her fans ahead of the U.S. Presidential election.
Other stars, including Eva Longoria, Chrissy Teigen, Tim Heidecker, and Florence Pugh, have all posted in support of the protest and against the ICE raids. Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong also made a bold statement on the protests, using one of the band's recently released songs.Billie Eilish's Brother Makes Shocking Claim About L.A. Protests first appeared on Parade on Jun 9, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 9, 2025, where it first appeared.
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Chicago Tribune
44 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago father becomes face of lawsuit against ICE as judge hears challenge to warrantless arrests
Abel Orozco was getting home after buying tamales for his family, like he did most weekends for the past 30 years. They would have breakfast and head to church. Instead, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained the Mexican immigrant outside his home in suburban Lyons without a federal warrant. Now, nearly six months later, he is still detained. Immigration and civil rights attorneys argue that his arrest was not only unfair but illegal. Thanks to the video his son recorded of the arrest, Orozco has become the face of a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE. Attorneys say the two government agencies violated the constitutional rights of Orozco and at least 25 other people, including one U.S. citizen, during the first week of increased immigration enforcement in the Chicago area after President Donald Trump took office. 'I'm not used to (speaking in public), it's something that's really awkward for me and embarrassing,' his son Eduardo Orozco told the Tribune. 'But even though I feel like that, I still have to do it for my father, and because there are many other people who are supporting us.' The father, 47, has a clean record. Yet he is the only plaintiff left that is still in detention. One was deported. The rest have been released. 'We are angry and concerned,' his son said. 'I hope the judge can see what we experienced on Sunday morning, and make a ruling in favor of my family and all the families affected by the cruelty of the ICE agents.' A federal judge heard arguments earlier this month for a motion filed by immigration attorneys and advocates who argued that DHS and ICE officers violated warrantless arrest policies amid sweeping arrests in the Chicago field office region in January. The motion, filed in March of this year, focuses on 25 people who were detained, including one U.S. citizen, in the Trump administration's highly publicized enforcement operation over the winter. In making arrests, the federal government allegedly went against both immigration laws and the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government, the plaintiffs argue. 'It seems as if there are repeat violations,' said Mark Fleming of the National Immigrant Justice Center in his closing argument to the judge. 'There is real concern that they are not following the law.' Judge Jeffrey Cummings of the District Court for the Northern District of Illinois was asked by Fleming to consider whether ICE's January arrests violated the 2022 Castañon Nava settlement agreement, which states that ICE must meet two criteria to make a warrantless arrest: probable cause that someone is in the U.S. unlawfully, and that the person is a flight risk. Immigrant advocates say ICE ignored those standards when it detained people in January without probable cause and before warrants were filled out. As for Orozco, Fleming said that federal agents allegedly created an administrative warrant while he was handcuffed. The Castañon Nava settlement agreement, which expired on May 13, had been the result of several ICE raids in the Chicagoland area in 2018 that the NIJC argued led to the collateral arrests of hundreds of individuals in vehicle stops and without warrants. Collateral arrests, or the detaining of individuals who are not targets, have become more common as the federal government ramps up daily quotas of people detained. Fleming described a pattern of reckless and unlawful enforcement actions after President Trump was sworn into office and pledged to begin mass deportations in Chicago. In some cases, he said, ICE agents will carry around blank warrants. 'That doesn't sit well with me,' Judge Cummings said, after asking to see a copy of the blank form. Defense attorneys William H. Weiland and Craig Oswald defended their policies, stating that there is nothing inappropriate about the agency's use of warrants and that ICE is entitled to continue the practice. Fleming focused on the case of Abel Orozco, who remains detained in a detention center in Indiana despite mounting legal and community pressure for his release. Abel Orozco had a prior removal order, said Fleming, but only because he wanted to see his ailing father in Mexico one more time before he died. According to the motion, ICE officers were apparently looking for one of Orozco's sons, who is decades younger but has the same name. The agents allegedly grabbed and handcuffed Abel Orozco after they saw his driver's license. His son Eduardo, 26, ran outside when he heard his father screaming, 'I can't breathe … call a lawyer.' Eduardo Orozco began questioning the agents and demanded a warrant. The agents stayed quiet and can be seen walking away from Eduardo Orozco who began recording the interaction 'knowing that something was not right,' he said. There were more than six agents with guns who surrounded their home and they refused to identify themselves. That's a scene that still haunts the family. 'They were trying to knock down the door to my house without a warrant,' Eduardo Orozco recalled. Weiland and Oswald defended the arrest by saying that assessing flight risk in real time can be difficult. But the motion argues that ICE didn't consider or document the individual's community ties — whether Abel Orozco had a home, family, or employment. Abel Orozco's wife has cancer, said Fleming. Abel Orozco had just started a tree-cutting business — a dream come true, his son said. In the months since Abel Orozco's arrest, according to Fleming, his business has floundered. Many of the other detainees were allegedly arrested after leaving their houses for work. They were often handcuffed and put in their cars, the motion states, without being allowed to call relatives and let them know what was happening. Plaintiffs cited two hours of security footage from a restaurant in Liberty, Missouri, showing 10 'heavily armed' federal agents who allegedly went into a restaurant and held 12 employees in booths before escorting them out and detaining them. Missouri is one of six states that the Chicago Field Office covers. On repeated occasions, ICE misspelled names or omitted important information while filling out warrants that were 'riddled with defects,' according to the motion. ICE was also delayed in its response after plaintiffs requested that it provide details on the arrests and paperwork, the motion states. Among other actions to prevent alleged unlawful ICE arrests, the motion seeks to extend the Castañon Nava settlement agreement for three years, demand the release of Abel Orozco, mandate the reporting of all arrests since Trump took office and order ICE officers operating in the Chicago region to be retrained. Cummings expressed that the allegations altogether seemed 'troubling,' especially considering that no one 'knows the magnitude of this problem.' The violations that the attorneys uncovered, he said, only came to light because families reached out to the immigrant advocacy organizations. Cummings did not make a ruling, but said he would try to come to a resolution as soon as possible. At a news conference after the hearing, community organizers gathered outside federal court to decry ICE's arrest practices in January. Fleming called the ICE arrests a 'parallel universe of unlawful policies' because the agency has no real method of accountability. The result is hundreds of people being taken from neighborhoods, said Xanat Sobrevilla, of Organized Communities Against Deportations. She said that after the 2018 immigration sweeps, ICE told her organization it would implement changes. 'Since January of this year, that commitment has been blatantly broken,' she said. 'We bear witness to families shattered, fathers and mothers taken from their homes.' For Eduardo Orozco and his family, the last six months have been overwhelming and heartbreaking. They missed several mortgage payments and the turmoil has caused emotional chaos to all of the family members. Still, he shows up in courtrooms, news conferences and other actions against ICE because he believes his father's story can spark change. 'We're not just fighting for him anymore,' Eduardo Orozco said. 'We're fighting for everyone who was taken like this.' As Judge Cummings weighs a decision that could set a precedent for how ICE operates in Chicago communities, immigrant rights advocates and families like the Orozcos wait. Not just for a ruling, but for repair by releasing Abel Orozco. As the elder Orozco remains in detention, Eduardo now juggles fatherhood, his father's collapsed business and caring for a sick mother, hoping to keep his family's faith that justice will be served and that his father will be released.
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
Alligator Alcatraz, the concentration camp in Florida, is a national disgrace
The first detainees have started arriving at Alligator Alcatraz, Florida's immigrant detention center in the Everglades. The facility went up on a former airstrip in eight days and will have an initial capacity of 3,000 detainees. Florida's Republican state Atty. Gen. James Uthmeier, the driving force behind the project, posted on X recently that the center 'will be checking in hundreds of criminal illegal aliens tonight. Next stop: back to where they came from.' Alligator Alcatraz — the camp's official name — raises logistical, legal and humanitarian concerns. It appears intentionally designed to inflict suffering on detainees, and to allow Florida politicians to exploit migrant pain for political gain. Some of the first people held there have already reported inhumane conditions. 'Alligator Alcatraz' is a misnomer. Alcatraz was home to dangerous criminals, including Al Capone and George 'Machine Gun' Kelly. These were violent offenders who had been tried and convicted and sent to the forbidding island fortress. In contrast, we don't know whether detainees sent to Alligator Alcatraz will have had their day in court. We don't know whether they will receive due process in immigration courts or be charged with a crime. We do know that the majority of people whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting have no criminal records. Remember, simply being in the U.S. without authorization is not a crime — it is a civil infraction. And the ranks of the undocumented include many people who once had lawful status, such as people who overstayed their visas and people with temporary protected status and other forms of humanitarian relief that the current administration has rescinded. Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research center, reports that 71% of immigrant detainees have no criminal record. In Florida, ICE has arrested an evangelical pastor, a mother of a newborn and a U.S. citizen. These are the kinds of people who might end up spending time in Alligator Alcatraz. In fact, Florida state documents show that detainees there could include women, children and the elderly. Alligator Alcatraz will place detainees in life-threatening conditions. The site consists of heavy-duty tents and mobile units, in a location known for intense humidity and sweltering heat. Tropical storms, hurricanes and floods pass through the area regularly. On a day when the president visited, there was light rain and parts of the facility flooded. This is not a safe place for the support staff who will be working there, nor is it for detainees. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has praised the 'natural' security at Alligator Alcatraz as 'amazing.' When asked if the idea was for detainees to get eaten by alligators if they try to escape, President Trump replied, 'I guess that's the concept.' However, escapes from immigration detention are rare. The June escape by four men from a New Jersey detention center made headlines, in part because it was such an unusual occurrence (three of the escaped detainees are back in custody). So the construction of a detention center with a 'moat' of forbidding wildlife is just performative cruelty. Consider the gleeful ways that Florida Republicans have promoted Alligator Alcatraz. The state GOP is selling branded merchandise online, such as hats and T-shirts. On his website, the attorney general is hawking his own products, including Alligator Alcatraz buttons and bumper stickers. But immigration detention is a serious matter. It should not be treated like a cheap spectacle, with souvenirs available for purchase. Immigrant advocacy groups are rightfully alarmed by Alligator Alcatraz. They're not the only ones: Environmental groups have protested its impact on the surrounding ecosystem, while Indigenous tribes are angry because the camp sits near lands that are sacred to them. The author of a global history of concentration camps has concluded that Alligator Alcatraz meets the criterion for such a label. The most troubling aspect of Alligator Alcatraz is that it may be a harbinger of things to come. The budget legislation that the president signed into law on July 4 allocates $45 billion for immigration detention over the next four years. Other states may follow Florida's example and set up detention centers in punishing locales. This will likely happen with little oversight, as the administration has closed the offices that monitored abuse and neglect in detention facilities. Yes, Homeland Security and ICE are mandated by law to arrest people who are in the country without authorization and to detain them pending removal. That is true no matter who is president. Yet Alligator Alcatraz is a state project, outside the normal scope of federal government accountability. On Thursday, state lawmakers who sought to inspect the facility were denied entry. In embracing Alligator Alcatraz, the administration is testing the limits of public support for the president's immigration agenda. According to a June Quinnipiac survey, 57% of voters disapprove of the president's handling of immigration. A more recent YouGov poll found that Alligator Alcatraz is likewise unpopular with a plurality of Americans. Alligator Alcatraz is not a joke. It is a dehumanizing political stunt that puts immigrant detainees at genuine risk of harm or death. Raul A. Reyes is an immigration attorney and contributor to NBC Latino and CNN Opinion. @RaulAReyes; @raulareyes1
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
ICE raids are cruel, but so is an economy built on undocumented labor
Even as Californians protest the crude and often brutal deportation tactics employed by President Trump's ICE and Homeland Security agents, we're giving too little thought to how our state, and the nation, is failing the very immigrant community we want to protect. In the past, particularly in the last century, when the U.S. economy, and California's, was growing at a fast rate, loosely controlled immigration filled critical needs and, over time, moved many immigrants into an increasingly diverse middle class. But now newcomers are getting stuck. According to new findings from USC and University of California researchers, immigrants account for nearly a quarter of the U.S. population living in poverty, up from 14% three decades ago. The immigrant poverty rate fluctuates, but it has been rising in recent years, especially since the pandemic. In 2024, 22.4% of all immigrants and 28.4% of non-citizen immigrants, including the undocumented, were poor, the highest rates since 2008. As well, welfare dependency is more pronounced among immigrants than the native born. A 2023 analysis of census data showed that 54% of households headed by naturalized citizens, legal residents and the undocumented use one or more welfare programs versus 39% of U.S.-born households. In California, the overall situation is only slightly better. A 2023 report from the Public Policy Institute of California put the poverty rate for all foreign-born residents at 17.6%, compared to 11.5% for those born here. For unauthorized immigrants, however, the rate was even higher than the national figure: 29.6%. Undocumented households, notes a separate USC study, have consistently had the lowest median household income in L.A. — $46,500, compared to $75,000 among all Angelenos in 2024. The grim statistics reflect a decline starting in the 1980s in blue-collar industries in California, which traditionally offered upward mobility to immigrants. Unionization in the immigrant-heavy hospitality industry has helped lift some families, but those gains may lead to fewer jobs as employers look to rein in costs, potentially by automating some services. And immigration itself, especially mass immigration, puts downward pressure on many of the jobs newcomers fill — in agriculture, for example, or construction. The dearth of jobs that support families has pushed California toward a model that Michael Lind, a Texas-based historian and author, describes as the 'low wage/high welfare model.' The fiscal implications are severe. The president has signed executive orders denying federal funds to sanctuary cities, funds that would shore up city and state budgets for policing, education and many other services affected by immigration. Those orders have been stymied in the courts, although Trump is sure to try again. At the same time, the budget the president signed into law on July 4 boosts funds for border enforcement but cuts back such things as medical services for non-citizens, even for those who are here legally. This will cause particular distress in deep blue states. California's current budget shortfall has forced Trump 'resistance' leader Gov. Gavin Newsom to scale back healthcare for the undocumented, which is also occurring in other progressive hotbeds such as Washington state, Illinois and Minnesota. The simple truth is that the low wage/high welfare economy dependent on illegal immigration isn't sustainable. Economic reality suggests we need a commonsense policy to restrict new migration and to focus on policies that can allow current immigrants — especially those deeply embedded in our communities and those with useful skills — to enjoy the success of previous generations. What would a commonsense policy look like? It would secure the border, which the Trump administration is already doing, and shift immigration priorities away from family reunion and more toward attracting those who can contribute to an increasingly complex economy. Deportations should prioritize convicted criminals and members of criminal gangs, whose presence is hardly welcomed by most immigrants. Law-abiding immigrants who are here without authorization should be offered a ticket home or a chance to register for legal status based on a clean record, paying taxes and steady employment. In addition we need to consider a new Bracero Program, which allowed guest workers to come to the U.S. legally without their families in the mid-20th century. Even President Trump has been forced to acknowledge that low-wage immigrant labor is difficult to replace in some sectors. This kind of immigration reform has eluded Congress for decades, but a clear-eyed assessment shows that merely welcoming newcomers willy-nilly won't pay off for most migrants or for California. A large pool of undocumented labor is the exact opposite of what is needed to nurture a strong and sustainable economy. If you are protesting against ICE raids and immigrant bashing, you should also be protesting for remaking U.S. immigration according to economic fundamentals. The prospect of a better life should be available to us all. Joel Kotkin is a contributing writer to Opinion, the presidential fellow for urban futures at Chapman University and senior research fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas, Austin.
