93PUNX, an alternative rock/rap band, fronted by Chicago musician Vic Mensa, has dropped a provocative music video for its debut single “Camp America”, which was inspired by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and facilities for Central American children illegally crossing the US southern border.
The controversial clip features white children in orange jumpsuits held in cages and being ordered around by guards, with Mensa, playing a security guard, rapping, “We’ll be living it up, not giving a f*ck/Splitting you up, then we put you in cuffs/Then we shipping you off, yeah, you could get lost at Camp America”.
The artist told The Daily Beast that both the song’s lyrics and the entire concept of the video flashed across his mind after he heard ICE Director Matthew Albence compare those detention facilities to summer camps: people have unlimited access to food and water, there’re basketball courts and football fields along with other exercise classes.
“I thought that was a crazy f*cking idea and wanted to create a world with this song that imagined that twisted alternate reality, where it was fun for kids to be held as prisoners, drinking out of toilets, away from their parents, and somehow enjoy it like one might at a summer camp”, Mensa told The Daily Beast.
Explaining why he decided to feature white children in his clip, the rapper told the media outlet that this was done in order to “point out the blatantly obvious fact that this would never happen to white kids in this country or maybe anywhere on this earth”.
The video was harshly condemned on social media, as many people stressed that the current US administration was not to blame for the “family separation” policy – the same facilities were used by President Donald Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
The Trump administration received much flak in April 2018 for adopting the so-called “zero tolerance” policy towards migrants: all those entering the US illegally faced immediate detention and prosecution, while all minors, who couldn’t be put in federal jails under US law, were thus forcibly separated from their parents and placed in shelters instead. The policy was reversed three months late