21 Savage Spoke out Against ICE Days Before Arrest

21 Savage released a music video for his song “A Lot” with a new verse calling out ICE just days before he was arrested for staying in the U.S. illegally.

Fans are reeling of rapper 21 Savage’s strangely prescient lyrics concerning immigration. The rapper released a music video for “A Lot,” a song from December featuring J. Cole, on Friday, Feb. 1. It included a few new lines about the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and some fans think it is a strange coincidence that the 21 Savage was arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency — or ICE.

“The lights was out, the gas was out, so we had to boil up the water,” he rapped in the new verse. “Been through some things, but I couldn’t imagine my kids stuck at the border (straight up) / Flint still need water / n—s was innocent, couldn’t get lawyers.”

The lyrics referred to the detainment centers set up by ICE after President Trump’s Justice Department enacted unforgiving immigration policies last year. This included family separation practices, where children were taken from their parents and, in some cases, kept for months on end with no visitation, updates, or information. The policies helped stir up anti-ICE sentiments among many Americans.

Fans were shocked to see 21 Savage arrested by ICE so soon after these lyrics came out. Many resisted the urge to peddle conspiracy theories, and yet the correlation was too strong for them to ignore.

“A couple days ago 21 savage adds an extra verse on the live performance of ‘A lot’ speaking on Flint and immigration. Today he is arrested by ICE with claims that he is from the U.K.,” one fan wrote. “Ay man I’m not saying this a set up but it’s highly questionable.”

“Man, such a crazy coincidence that 21 Savage dropped a music video 2 days ago that mentioned kids being taken into custody by ICE at the border and now ICE arrests him for supposedly overstaying a visa from 2005 when he was 13,” added another, with chin-scratching emojis.

On Monday, 21 Savage’s lawyer, Charles H. Knuck, told WSB-TV that ICE had arrested his client “based upon incorrect information.” The agency claimed that the rapper had come to the U.S. from the U.K. in 2005, when he was 13 years old. They said that his visa had expired the following year and he had been here illegally ever since. However, 21 Savage was arrested several times in those 12 years, and his citizenship never became an issue.

According to Knuck, 21 Savage filed for a U-Visa in 2017 with the Department of Homeland Security, and he “never hid his immigration status from the U.S. government.”

“Based upon incorrect information about prior criminal charges and now refusing to release him on bond of any amount, despite the fact that he has a pending U-Visa application (as the victim of crime) with USCIS, and that he has relief from removal available to him,” Knuck said in a statement.

After the arrest, ICE spokesman Brian Cox admitted that 21 Savage had been taken in a “targeted operation.”