Doechii graciously accepted her first BET Award on Monday, but not without taking a moment to address the protests in Los Angeles over the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration raids.
“As much as I’m honored by this award,” the rap star, 26, began her acceptance speech from the Peacock Theater in downtown LA, “I do want to address what’s happening outside of the building.”
“There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order,” the Grammy winner continued. “Trump is using military forces to stop a protest. And I want y’all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic rights to protest, the military is deployed against us.”
“What type of government is that?” Doechii added, distressingly.
The Grammy winner boldly called out how “people are being swept up and torn from their families” before ending with a unifying message.
“I feel it’s my responsibility as an artist to use this moment to speak up for all oppressed people,” Doechii concluded. “For Black people, for Latino people, for trans people, for the people of Gaza, we all deserve to live in hope and not in fear, and I hope we stand together, my brothers and my sisters, against hate. And we protest against it.”
The rapper’s biting criticism of Trump comes after U.S. officials said the president authorized the deployment of 2,000 additional National Guard members to stop protests that erupted in LA over the weekend in response to the president’s aggressive immigration policies.
According to Reuters, the U.S. military will also temporarily deploy roughly 700 Marines to the city until more National Guard troops can arrive.
Trump first ordered the National Guard to LA on Friday, as law enforcement clashed with protesters who criticized raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Some of those protesters were met with tear gas and pepper spray, NPR reported, after they gathered outside of a detention center on Sunday where detainees were initially held.
On Saturday, ICE wrote in an X post that it arrested 118 immigrants as it attempted to enforce immigration law in the area.
In his own Truth Social post, Trump slammed the “Radical Left protests” while thanking the National Guard for a “job well done” in responding to them.
Since the protests began, Trump has floated the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act, which would give him the authority to respond to civil unrest by deploying the military.
On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to stop further deployment of the National Guard.