Kacey Musgraves drew boycott calls after using a Chicago concert to solicit donations for migrant children.
The eight-time Grammy winner opened her “Middle of Nowhere” tour at the United Center in Chicago, where she turned part of the show into a fundraising appeal. The concert also happened to fall on her 38th birthday.
Musgraves asked the crowd to donate to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights as a birthday gift. The organization works with volunteers, attorneys, and social workers to advocate for unaccompanied and separated migrant children held in government custody.
Before making the ask, she described who the donations would benefit. “It’s a wonderful organization, and they help give aid, legal aid, and money to children whose parents have been deported unfairly,” she told the audience. The crowd responded with loud applause and cheers.
She tried to frame the appeal as something other than a political statement. “It’s not a political thing. It’s just, these kids need help,” she said. As originally reported, Musgraves went on to describe the children as having “no guidance and no way to get through this thing without their homebase or their parents.”
She also made clear the donation was optional. “So anyway, 50 cents, whatever the hell, I don’t know, whatever you want to do but that would mean a lot to me,” she said, adding that skipping the donation was “totally fine too.”
That attempt to depoliticize the moment did little to quiet her critics. Once video of the remarks spread online, conservative backlash followed quickly. Several critics challenged her characterization of federal immigration enforcement as unfair, and some promised to pull her music from their playlists and skip future concerts.
The word “unfairly” became the focal point of the controversy. Conservatives pushed back on the suggestion that deportations carried out under federal immigration law were unjust, and the resulting backlash turned a birthday fundraising pitch into a flashpoint in the broader national debate over immigration enforcement.
Musgraves has not publicly responded to the boycott calls. The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights pairs interdisciplinary staff with community volunteers to support migrant children navigating the immigration system without a parent or guardian present.