‘ICE could be outside my concert’: Bad Bunny on why he won’t tour U.S.

The world’s biggest artist says mass deportations forced him to keep America off the map.

BAD BUNNY CAN SELL OUT YANKEE STADIUM twice in one summer. He can get Saturday Night Live to move heaven and earth for his monologues. He can even make Adam Sandler pick up a golf club again for Happy Gilmore 2.

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But this fall, the most popular artist in the world won’t play a single show in the United States. Not because the money isn’t green. Not because the fans don’t scream his name like church bells. No, he’s not coming because of the guys in masks.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement: ICE.

“I was worried ICE could be outside my concert,” he told i-D magazine, flat as if he were talking about the weather.

Picture it: 20,000 kids in a sold-out arena, flags draped on their shoulders, abuelas FaceTiming from the nosebleeds. And then the agents outside the gates in their RAV-4s, same cars Bad Bunny filmed in Puerto Rico, waiting to pluck people out of the line. Maybe your cousin. Maybe your mom. Maybe the kid next to you who just wanted to hear Tití Me Preguntó.

The man calls it what it is: fear. Not the kind that makes you stay home sick. The kind that tells you to stay out of the whole damn country.

This is where we’re at. Festivals canceled in Chicago. Neil Young wondering if he’ll be barred at the airport for bad-mouthing Trump. Families skipping school, skipping hospitals, skipping life because the federal cops wear masks now and don’t care if the music stops.

And Bad Bunny — Benito, the pride of Vega Baja — looks at America and says: come to Puerto Rico if you want me. A U.S. territory where the agents already lurk, but at least the stage is his.

The tour kicks off Nov. 21 in the Dominican Republic, ends next July in Belgium. Everything in between — Mexico, Europe, Latin America — is wide open. Except here.

So if you’re looking for the concert of the decade, the one where the arena shakes and people forget how bad the world’s gotten, don’t check the schedule in New York, Miami, or L.A. This time, the United States didn’t make the cut. ICE did.

Because when the history books write about the concerts that never happened, they won’t say Bad Bunny turned his back on America.

They’ll say America let the men in masks steal the music.

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