Radiohead tell ICE to take down its “Let Down” video

Radiohead have told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remove a social media video that uses “Let Down”, in a short statement issued on Friday 27 February. We demand that the amateurs in control of the ICE social media account take it down.⁴ It ain't funny, this song means a lot to us and other people, and you don't get to appropriate it without a fight. Also, go fuck yourselves.²

ICE posted the video on X and Instagram on 18 February, and the accounts of the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and Donald Trump shared it. It opens on a black screen during the third verse of a choral version of the song, by singers it does not credit. Then it shows photographs, one at a time, of Americans ICE says were raped or murdered by people in the country illegally. The caption ends “This is our why”. “Let Down”, an album track from OK Computer, entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 91 last August, 28 years after the record came out.

Earlier this month Jonny Greenwood and Paul Thomas Anderson asked for Greenwood's Phantom Thread music to be taken out of the documentary Melania. Far Out notes that Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and SZA have all objected to administration videos using their songs, and The Cure had DHS remove one set to “Friday I'm In Love” last October.

The band's PR agency told NBC News the song was used without their permission. Lauren Bis, a deputy assistant secretary at DHS, answered by naming victims the department says it is fighting for, among them Laken Riley and Rachel Morin, and would not say whether the video would come down.