‘Closing Time’ Singer Slams Trump for Border Patrol Video
The media team at United States Border Patrol are upping their content game and using popular music as backing tracks to bizarre deportation videos.
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/The White House
The Trump Administration’s Border Control has dropped another Instagram video attempting to make deportations look cool. And the songwriter who penned the unrelated song they used to illustrate their point is firing back.
Days after the agency’s social media team used a Chris Brown song to glamorize the border beat, the Trump Administration’s Border Control posted another clip Monday—this time showing young men in chains being loaded onto planes.
In the new clip, tattooed deportees are seen being grabbed by border guards as Semisonic’s iconic 1998 hit “Closing Time” plays.
“Closing time. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here,” go the lyrics, as the adjoining clip shows the shackled men walking up a set of stairs and into an aircraft.
Reached for comment by the Daily Beast, a spokesperson for Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson, who wrote the ‘90s hit, said, “We did not authorize or condone the White House’s use of our song in any way. And no, they didn’t ask. The song is about joy and possibilities and hope, and they have missed the point entirely.”
The clip was immediately reposted on X by White House communications director Steven Cheung and MAGA influencers Mike Cernovich, and Libs of TikTok, the latter of whom called it an “epic troll.”
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The new video comes as President Donald Trump continues his crackdown on illegal immigration, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up the process.
Trump used the order to expedite the deportation of 137 migrants to El Salvador on Saturday. On Sunday, he defended his use of the 18th century wartime law, only previously used during the War of 1812 and the two World Wars.
His administration proceeded with the deportations even as a federal judge ordered a temporary pause and asked that any flights in the air be turned around.
The new Border Patrol mini production is the latest attempt by the agency to become more social media savvy and glamorize its work, despite mounting criticism.
On Friday, the force racked up nearly 100,000 likes after sharing a video showing one of their vehicles doing its rounds near the U.S.-Mexico border with Chris Brown’s 2011 “Look at Me Now” ft. Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes as a backing track.
“I don’t see how you can hate from outside of the club. You can’t even get in,” Brown says, as the video shows a patrol vehicle driving alongside Trump’s border wall.
This video also garnered more than 1.7 million likes on TikTok.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Semisonic’s management about the use of the band’s work in the Border Patrol’s latest video.
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