Each year, The Recording Academy hosts the Grammy Awards for the most talented and prestigious musical artists. Many artists can win an award across the 95 categories, for performances, albums, records, singles, genres and more. Before the show, artists appear to the public, showcasing their elaborate outfits for the year. Many artists for the 2026 Grammys were seen wearing “ICE OUT” pins on their chests.
The “ICE OUT” pins are a subtle protest against the presence of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) and its actions. The protest is calling for the defunding, removal and abolishment of ICE. Artists like Billie Eilish, Justin and Hailey Bieber, Brandi Carlile, Carole King and many more were wearing the pins.
A majority of artists who were wearing the pins made statements about their opinions on ice. “No one is illegal on stolen land,” Billie Eilish said on Rolling Stone. Billie has made several previous remarks about her opinion on ICE. Though her comments about ICE have received positive feedback before, her comment at the Grammys received negative feedback from many people in the audience, including Emily Austin, who said her speech was “painful to listen to.”
SZA, who won best record with Kendrick Lamar for their song Luther, stated her opinion on the difference between how the artists’ lives are and the lives of immigrants: “It’s incredibly dystopian that we’re dressed up and able to celebrate accolades in the material world, and people are getting snatched up and shot in the face on the street,” SZA said on Rolling Stone.
The Grammys are always a hot topic among Highlands students, discussing the outfits worn and the awards won by their favorite artists. But now with the artists at the Grammys wearing ICE OUT pins with their elaborate outfits, new opinions about the event are coming up.
“I think it’s great that people in power, like artists, are actually saying something about ICE, the subtleness of just the pins is pretty powerful, honestly. I loved watching it this year,” Charlotte Clair (10) said.
The publicity that artists could get from their ICE protest could go either way, but the pins alone are effective in themselves; whether an artist gets positive or negative responses from the public, their voices are still being heard.
“I think that it’s really effective that they were wearing the pins; they’re very public people with a lot of effect on the public, their voices will be heard more than ours and can be very persuasive to their fans,” Harrison Schultz (12) said.
