How 'ICE OUT' Pins Became the Celebrity Accessory of the Moment - GQ

Last Friday, fresh off his win on The Traitors (and a charming GQ profile), Rob Rausch

stepped outalongside fellow Traitor Lisa Rinna in New York City. The Alabama snake wrangler wasn’t wearing his signature denim overalls—he was sporting an “ICE OUT” badge pinned to his hoodie.

This awards season, “ICE OUT” and “BE GOOD” pins have emerged as the most prominent accessories on the red carpet. At the Grammys, Golden Globes, and this past Sunday’s SAG Actor Awards, some of world’s biggest celebrities have worn the simple white badges to condemn incursions of officers from the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into American cities. A coalition of organizations including Latino activist group Maremoto, progressive advocacy group Working Families Power, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and the ACLU launched the pin campaign in light of the multiple killings of Americans—among them Keith Porter Jr., Alex Pretti, and Renee Good—by ICE agents since December 7. (According to one estimate, eight people have been fatally shot by ICE or US Customs and Border Protection [CBP] agents since Donald Trump’s second inauguration in 2025.)

“I don’t fuck with ICE,” Rausch says over text message. “I couldn’t sleep at night not supporting my immigrant brothers and sisters. It’s one thing to enforce the law, it’s another thing to dehumanize people and break up families.”

Maremoto executive director Jess Morales Rocketto and Working Families Party director of strategy Nelini Stamp conceived of the idea just 72 hours before this years’s Golden Globes, and quickly creating and distributing the “ICE OUT” and “BE GOOD” pins to celebrities like Mark Ruffalo, Ariana Grande, Wanda Sykes, and Natasha Lyonne. (Per a press release, “The #BeGood campaign aims to honor Renée Macklin Good and Keith Porter while also reminding us what it means to be good to one another in the face of such horror—to be a good citizen, neighbor, friend, ally and human.”)

The pins proliferated with every major cultural event that has passed since. Natalie Portman and Olivia Wilde wore the badges during the Sundance Film Festival. At the Grammys, Justin and Hailey Bieber, Billie Eilish, Finneas, Kehlani, and Joni Mitchell fastened the pins onto their designer outfits. During the broadcast, Eilish and album of the year winner Bad Bunny also condemned ICE in their respective acceptance speeches.

“We can’t let any cultural event go by over the next few months that doesn’t actually address this, because ICE OUT is a demand,” Stamp says.

The badges have infiltrated the fashion world, as well, popping up on showgoers at New York Fashion Week and even in Supreme’s spring 2026 lookbook—a rare political statement from the streetwear brand. In a since-modified carousel post shared on Supreme’s Instagram on February 23, a model can be seen wearing American-flag-printed trousers and a black zip-up jacket embroidered with the Misfits skull logo on the back; in another view of the jacket, there’s a conspicuous “ICE OUT” pin fastened to the front. The post received more likes (about 37,400) and comments (307) than most of the other lookbook images shared that day, many of them in support of the pin: “Anti-ICE Supreme is exactly what we need right now. Love to see it,” one read. (As of at least late last week, the brand had removed the original photo of the pin from the Instagram post; it also does not appear in the official lookbook on Supreme’s website. A representative for the brand did not respond to requests for comment.)

As of last week (and prior to Sunday’s Actor Awards), Morales Rocketto says the coalition has counted over 98 celebrities wearing the “ICE OUT” buttons and their variations so far, with more contacting the coalition to collect pins for upcoming events.

Looking ahead to the capstone of awards season—the Academy Awards ceremony on March 15—Morales Rocketto feels optimistic. “We continue to see momentum grow on the campaign,” she says. “We’re hoping that that continues at the Oscars. It’s a little bit of a different crowd than the Grammys or Sundance. And I’m really hoping that some of these folks that will be accepting awards are also going to be acknowledging what’s happening in the world.”

Jessica Herman Weitz, national director of artist and entertainment engagement for the ACLU, says these red carpet moments help direct public attention to ICE’s actions. Artist participation in the campaign helps “keep the names of the people who have been killed by ICE agents in the public consciousness, and also to keep our government accountable,” she says.

Their message has only become more urgent as awards season has progressed. After Good’s death on January 7, ICE and CBP continued to ramp up their tactics in Minnesota as part of Operation Metro Surge, a federal campaign to seize and deport undocumented immigrants in the state. Before January was over, ICE had detained five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and federal immigration agents had killed Pretti, a 37-year-old VA ICU nurse, sparking massive protests across the country.

A little over a week after the Grammys, White House border czar Tom Homan announced that more than a thousand federal agents had left Minnesota. As of February 25, ICE officials reported that 400 enforcement officers and agents remained. Organizers urged the public to continue to scrutinize federal agencies even as they attempt to deescalate their rhetoric. Morales Rocketto noted that ICE still maintains a significant presence in major cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York, with the Trump administration fighting for more agency funding.

As a result, collective action against ICE continues, especially as Congressional Democrats continue to negotiate funding for the Department of Homeland Security. DHS has been shut down for weeks as Democrats have pushed to reign in ICE. Still, the continued shutdown demonstrates they are feeling the pressure from constituents and cultural figures who have demanded they put a stop to the immigration crackdown.

“The DHS shutdown is a testament to this cultural work putting pressure on politics, because we are saying, ‘Not another dime,’” Stamp says. “ICE already got $75 billion. Why do they need more money?”

After the Oscars, Stamp says that she hopes to engage stars during music festival season and the World Cup, the latter of which coincides with America’s upcoming semiquincentennial—the 250th anniversary of the formal approval of the Declaration of Independence. She anticipates that the global tournament, which includes teams from 48 different countries, will present “lots of opportunities to put more pressure” on the Trump administration.

“The challenge is like, where do you go from here?” she says. “How do you continue to elevate pressure so that people don’t settle on, ‘Oh, I’m just going to wear a pin, and that’s it.’ We still need to do that, but we also need to take people on a journey and continue to develop folks’ activism around this.”

Trishna Rikhy contributed reporting.