In September 2025, Cardi B told Billboard she was done.
“You know the reason why I’ve been so silent about politics?” she said. “There’s a president that knows I’ve never supported him and it’s like if I say something, he’s not going to care. I tried to give people warnings and it is what it is. What I can do? What I can say?”
Five months later, on an elevated platform in Palm Desert, California, she answered her own question — with a threat aimed directly at federal agents.
What She Said on Night One
On Wednesday, Cardi B opened her first-ever headlining arena tour — the Little Miss Drama Tour — at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert.
During the Latin segment of her 37-song set, she stepped up onto a platform mid-performance of “La Cucaracha,” stopped the music, and asked the crowd a question: any Guatemalans in the building? Any Mexicans?
Then she made her position clear.
“Bitch, if ICE come in here, we gon’ jump they asses,” she told the packed arena. “I got some bear mace in the back. They ain’t taking my fans, bitch.”
The crowd erupted.
Cardi went from singing Como la Flor to dragging ICE to performing I Like It 😂🔥 pic.twitter.com/FbOT3SD7d0
— AM I THE DRAMA? (@CardiAllAccess) February 12, 2026
She Didn’t Go Silent. She Changed Venues.
Here’s the part nobody is talking about.
Cardi B didn’t actually stop being political after that Billboard interview. She just stopped doing it on Instagram. What she did instead was take it to stages — bigger ones, with louder speakers and no comment sections.
The timeline tells the story.
September 2025: She told Billboard she was going silent on politics. She said she’d had to “really, really bite my tongue.” She said the president wouldn’t listen and asked, “What I can do? What I can say?”
October 2025: She didn’t stay quiet for long. Weeks later, she was back on Instagram Live slamming Donald Trump‘s immigration policies, telling her followers that Trump “was never for y’all poor motherf—kers” and warning that SNAP benefit cuts would mean “no turkey for some of y’all” by Thanksgiving. The silence, it turned out, was never total — but the biggest moments were increasingly happening off-screen.
December 2025: She headlined the Soundstorm Festival in Saudi Arabia and went live from Riyadh, calling America “ghetto” and saying she didn’t want to come back — partially in response to Vice President JD Vance tweeting “Nicki > Cardi” in support of her rival Nicki Minaj. “The Vice President is talking sh-t about me on Twitter,” she said. “I don’t feel real appreciated in America.”
Nicki>Cardi https://t.co/LlbijpnwcD
— JD Vance (@JDVance) December 11, 2025
February 8, 2026: She appeared onstage at Super Bowl LX alongside Bad Bunny during his halftime show — the same Bad Bunny who had excluded the United States entirely from his 2025-2026 world tour over fears that ICE could raid concert venues, and who opened his Grammy acceptance speech one week earlier with “ICE out.” Cardi praised him publicly: “I’m proud of everything that he’s been standing up for against ICE and everything.”
February 11, 2026: Three days later, she opened her own 35-date tour by threatening to physically confront ICE agents and claiming she had bear mace backstage.
That’s not silence. That’s escalation.
What Changed
The shift wasn’t random.
On January 7, 2026, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. The shooting sparked nationwide protests and fueled what has become known as the “ICE-out” movement — a growing wave of celebrities and public figures vocally opposing the agency’s enforcement tactics.
In September, Cardi B said speaking up felt pointless because the president wouldn’t listen.
By February, the audience had changed. It wasn’t the White House she was talking to anymore. It was a packed arena full of fans — some of them from the very communities ICE is targeting.
The woman who said “What I can do?” found something she could do: turn a concert into a statement.
The Reaction Is Split — And That’s the Point
Fans who supported the moment say she was doing what artists with platforms are supposed to do — standing between her audience and the thing they fear most. They point out that the ICE comment came during the Latin segment of the show, right before “I Like It” — a track featuring Bad Bunny — and argue that the moment was less about provocation and more about solidarity.
Critics see it differently. Some accused her of encouraging violence against federal officers. Others pointed to the fact that people who have actually confronted ICE agents have been shot and killed — a grim reminder that what sounds defiant from a concert stage carries real consequences on the ground.
Neither side appears interested in the middle.
34 Shows Left
The Little Miss Drama Tour runs through April 17, with stops in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Houston, New York’s Madison Square Garden, Toronto, and Atlanta.
In September, she said she was tired. In December, she said she might not come back to America. In February, she’s headlining arenas across it — and using every stage as a megaphone.
Cardi B didn’t go quiet on politics. She just got a bigger room.
