Bad Bunny’s halftime performance was an emotional one for millions of Latino/a/x/e and Caribbean people. And it wasn’t just the music that hit us hard.
The day before the Super Bowl, I was in the basement of a union hall in Los Angeles discussing the latest attempt to translate xenophobia into political support for increasingly unpopular MAGA Republican members of Congress seeking reelection. Since most measures of affordability for working-class families have gotten worse since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the White House has decided to fast track a series of so-called “affordable housing” proposals ahead of this month’s State of the Union address, beginning with a change to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rules that have been in place for generations.
Since 1980, non-citizen family members have been allowed to live with citizens in HUD housing under the condition that non-citizens pay market rate for their portion of the rent, according to the Congressional Research Service. No one with DACA, TPS, a student visa or who is undocumented or has impermanent status may receive federal dollars, but families have been allowed to live together to ensure the well-being of school age children, seniors, veterans, disabled persons and those with infirmities. Despite the fact that the White House knows full well that mixed-status families pay higher rents and subsidize housing for citizens in already underfunded HUD housing, the MAGA GOP are betting that their bald-face lies will stick because the Supreme Court will hear the argument put forth by Trump — and by extension, Matt Raymer ’03, who has publicly made the same argument — for overturning birthright citizenship on April 1.
What does this have to do with Latinos, Caribbean people and Bad Bunny? Everything.
Seventy-nine percent of Latinos in the U.S. are U.S. citizens. Over 60% of Caribbean immigrants are U.S. citizens, and 100% of Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917. But that has not stopped Puerto Ricans — including a Navy veteran in New Jersey — from being detained. In fact, because so-called “immigration enforcement” disproportionately targets Latino and Caribbean people, these statistics are meaningless.
For decades, the largest increases in immigration have come from nations outside of Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet 90% of people detained, arrested or deported in 2025 were Latino.
Read that again.
The great irony of Dartmouth (and others) preemptively complying with the Trump directive to not to speak about race and ethnicity — to treat it as something as proscribed as mentions of Voldemort or repetitions of Beetlejuice — is that people are being preyed upon on the basis of their race and ethnicity.
Black and Brown people in this country are being hunted down by the largest, most well-funded, militarily-armed “police” force in the country. And before anyone from the Dartmouth Review or the College’s Turning Point USA chapter cries foul, or anyone who “doesn’t like to talk about politics” clutches their metaphoric pearls, I urge you to read the Supreme Court’s decision in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo and last month’s leaked memo stating that ICE can enter any private space they wish without a warrant.
The Court’s ruling allows DHS, CBP and ICE agents to ramp up aggressive “roving patrols,” and green-lights stops explicitly based on race and ethnicity, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit aimed at ending mass incarceration. The decision removed restrictions that would have protected people like Martin Daniel Rascon, Marimar Martinez, Dayanne Figueroa, Leonardo Garcia Venegas and veteran George Retes from being pursued because of the color of their skin.
Trump already overturned a 2011 directive that said that agents were not allowed to enter churches, hospitals, courts, shelters and schools like Hanover High and Dartmouth, according to the AP. But the leaked ICE memo justifies using the same force to enter homes — houses, apartments and dorm rooms — without judicial warrants. We have seen such force used in window-smashing car arrests and street stops in which tear gas, pepper spray, flashbang grenades and live ammunition have been used.
This is the backdrop of Bad Bunny’s performance.
Five-year-old Liam Ramos is being targeted by the government whose flag he pledges allegiance to in his classroom. Bad Bunny places the Grammy he won in the hands of a symbolic child, while his Album of the Year speech that began with “ICE out!” plays in the background.
Lady Gaga, whose skin color, hair type and age match that of Renee Good, brings her voice and her physical presence to a legal wedding — a space that until recently was safe and off-limits to agents with guns drawn — and is enthusiastically welcomed and embraced.
Latinos and Caribbean people do not share a common language, faith or story of how we came to be U.S. residents. Many of us carry the epigenetic markers of Indigenous genocide, diasporic chattel slavery, ethnic cleansing through the pursuit of mestizaje and blanqueamiento, and the trauma of colonialism, imperialism and state-sponsored violence. Some of us do not. But whatever differences we might have across experiences, class, education, phenotype or identity, we saw ourselves in the procession Bad Bunny led at the end of his performance.
Others might have just seen a sea of flags or heard a list of countries in the Western Hemisphere named alongside the United States. But Latinos and Caribbean people tasted the tears running down our cheeks. And we felt the words “Together we are America” in our souls.
Unai Montes-Irueste is a member of the Class of 1998, Dartmouth Association of Latino Alumni and Dartmouth Alumni Council. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
