Tom Morello, the outspoken musician and activist known for his work with Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, and Bruce Springsteen, didn’t hold back on Tuesday when he joined forces with the New York coalition Hands Off NYC during a press conference and solidarity performance at 26 Federal Plaza. Morello addressed a crowd of New Yorkers and slammed the Trump administration‘s ICE abuses, calling out unlawful immigration detention tactics and practices within the White House.
“My mother and I lived at 142nd and Riverside a long time ago,” Morello said, evoking his early years in upper Manhattan. “Brothers and sisters, if I’ve learned one thing in all my years since then, it’s that if it looks like fascism, sounds like fascism, dresses like fascism, talks like fascism, kills like fascism, and lies like fascism — brothers and sisters, it’s fucking fascism.”
Morello continued from a personal place, sharing recent experiences with people close to him detained. “A close family friend was recently kidnapped by ICE. A grandmother, a law-abiding, hard-working grandma. Coming home one night from the grocery store, was jumped by mass government thugs, thrown into an unmarked van, and deported without a hint of due process,” he said. “Trump claims that immigrants are criminals and rapists. Well this immigrant grandma never murdered 180 schoolgirls in Iran by bombing them to pieces. And this immigrant grandma never sexually assaulted underage kids with Trump’s ruling-class buddies on Epstein Island. That’s right. You want to arrest murderers and rapists? You need to look no further than the damn White House.”
He encouraged people to stand up against the administration and called for a wider movement of people standing up for what’s right. “We are living in a time where ideas are a crime, where gender is a crime, where skin color is a crime, where the truth is a crime, while the real criminals dine and toast with dictatorship on their minds and golf clubs in their tiny hands,” he said. “What is called for right now is a mass movement of peaceful anti-fascist crime fighters. That is you, so let’s go, let’s take the power back and adjourn this motherfucking authoritarian clown show once and for all.”
Morello then took out his guitar and performed a stripped-back version of the Woody Guthrie protest anthem “This Land Is Your Land.”
26 Federal Plaza houses a federal immigration court and has been a frequent protest location for New Yorkers fighting against ICE’s abuses and the targeting of immigrant New Yorkers. The event came together to address increased ICE presence in New York, organized just one week after Border Czar Tom Homan threatened to “flood the zone” with “more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen before” in sanctuary cities.
The press conference today also included Allan Dabrio Marrero, a New Yorker who was detained and moved through five ICE facilities in five months. “I constantly worry about my brothers and sisters that are still inside, whose families have been torn apart by this broken system,” he said.
Morello outside 26 Federal Plaza in New York City.
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, also spoke and highlighted that several of the immigration tactics being discussed were taking place right at the location of the event. “We are standing at 26 Federal Plaza, where tens of thousands of people show up to follow the process outlined by the law to seek immigration relief. And thousands of New Yorkers have been tricked and trapped, and taken here. This has never been about immigration enforcement — it’s about cruelty, and that is the point.”
Morello, who is currently on tour with Springsteen and the E Street Band as part of the 2026 Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour, has continued speaking out against Trump and ICE. (He also got Springsteen to perform at A Concert of Solidarity & Resistance to Defend Minnesota!, which he organized in January.)
“Together, Bruce, the E Street Band, and I are going to turn a spotlight on the current threats to democracy and human rights happening all around us on the Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour in the spirit of freedom, justice and rock n roll,” he said when it was first announced he was joining the tour.
Last summer, he released a Fuck ICE playlist and recently hosted a Defend Minnesota fundraiser event.
