Selena Gomez is facing backlash from some Trump supporters after posting a tear-filled video about Trump’s deportation policies.

The 32-year-old actress shared the video on Instagram before quickly deleting the post on Monday.

Why It Matters

Trump made immigration a central theme of his successful presidential campaign and Americans largely support his mass deportation plans.

A New York Times/Ipsos poll, carried out from January 2 to 10, found 55 percent of voters strongly or somewhat supported such plans. Eighty-eight percent supported “Deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records.” Large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the immigration system is broken.

What To Know

In response to Trump’s deportation orders, Gomez posted a video that showed her crying over the recent deportations.

Nearly 1,000 people have been arrested since January 20, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“All my people are getting attacked, the children,” Gomez said as she held back sobs. “I don’t understand. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something, but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”

Gomez’s video quickly garnered backlash from some viewers before she ended up taking the video down.

“Posting yourself weeping over illegal immigrant criminals being deported is a new level of absurd celebrity narcissism,” Piers Morgan wrote on X.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh also pushed back against Gomez online. “Move back to Mexico in solidarity with them. That’s something you could do.”

After Gomez deleted the video, she uploaded an Instagram story saying, “Apparently it’s not ok to show empathy for people.”

Gomez’s own family immigrated from Mexico to the United States, and the former Disney star has said her aunt crossed the U.S. border from Mexico while hidden in the back of a truck.

Trump just recently instructed U.S. government agencies to prepare to “immediately repel, repatriate, and remove” undocumented migrants to stop the “invasion” across the border.

This could impact 11.7 million people who live in the United States without legal status.

What People Are Saying

Gomez previously wrote in a Time essay: ‘Undocumented immigration is an issue I think about every day, and I never forget how blessed I am to have been born in this country thanks to my family and the grace of circumstance. But when I read the news headlines or see debates about immigration rage on social media, I feel afraid for those in similar situations. I feel afraid for my country.”

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk wrote to Gomez on X: “Aren’t you American? Where was the sobbing over the 100,000 Americans dead from fentanyl poisoning? Where were these tears over the 340,000 children who went missing after being trafficked over our border? Why wasn’t there a breakdown for Rachel Nungary, Rachel Morin, or Laken Riley? I guess those Americans weren’t ‘your people?'”

William F. Hall, adjunct professor of political science and business at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, told Newsweek: “Under President Trump’s new deportation policies, he appears, right at the start of his Administration, to have taken the gloves off and totally removed any of the former barriers that previously have either mitigated or served as obstacles, in the struggle to remove all immigrants whom the new Administration deems as either illegally in the United States and/or otherwise in other ways, unfit to be in the United States, broadly interpreted.”

Robert Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University, told Newsweek: “I do not put much stock in celebrity endorsement but in the influence of perceptions of what is happening with many voices speaking. Trump’s policy differs from Biden’s in that it is a shock and awe strategy that Trump is using to dominate the news and attention to attempt to gain credit for keeping his promise of large scale deportations.”

What Happens Next

Compared to Biden, the Trump administration is far less willing to allow any potential obstacles to prevent ICE from achieving its deportation objectives, Hall said.

“The United States has also not witnessed such an overwhelming blizzard of new Presidential Executive Orders, Presidential Memoranda Directives and related proposed new legislative initiatives, since the early days at the start of former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Administration in 1964,” Hall said. “In my view, it appears that President Trump, may have borrowed a page from former President Lyndon Johnson’s playbook…. and is attempting to achieve as much as possible, particularly as it relates to deportation, before the presidential mandate/honeymoon may end.”

This month, ICE officials told the Washington Post that ICE would increase its daily arrest goal from a few hundred people to between 1,200 and 1,500 per day.