A long-standing pro-immigrant slogan took on a chaotic second life this week after Billie Eilish quoted it during her Grammys acceptance speech.
"No one is illegal on stolen land," a phrase rooted in Indigenous and immigrant-rights activism, quickly became raw material for meme culture with bad-faith interpretations and increasingly absurd posts that treated the slogan as a permission slip to break laws.
As the meme spread, its original political meaning collapsed under irony, eventually dragging a real Native American tribe into a joke they never agreed to be part of.
Billie Eilish: "No one is illegal on stolen land"
Billie Eilish used her platform as the 2026 Song of the Year winner to speak out against the ICE raids terrorizing—and sometimes killing—people across the U.S. During her speech at the Grammys on Sunday, she evoked a long-used pro-immigrant phrase.
"No one is illegal on stolen land," she said. "It’s really hard to know what to say and what to do right now. I just I feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter."
She also said "f*ck ICE" before leaving the stage.
Left-wing activists, especially those who belong to indigenous tribes, have been using this statement to protest anti-immigrant sentiments and government activities for years. It seeks to point out the hypocrisy of demanding migrants follow the laws of a nation that illegally ripped land rights away from its original occupants.
European colonists and later the U.S. government repeatedly violated treaties and slaughtered indigenous peoples as they spread across the continent. Now, their descendants seek to deport those who came to this place after we limited Native American land to impoverished "reservations."
A political slogan becomes a meme at scale
Of course nothing is sacred on the internet, and users began taking the word "illegal" out of context to transform the phrase into a joke.
"Nobody is illegally drunk driving on stolen land, officer," wrote @ChuckFBass on X.
"Sorry boss not making it in tomorrow our office is on stolen land," said @YoungUrbPro.
"'No one is illegal on stolen land' I mutter to myself as I kick in the back door of Krispy Kreme and start grabbing hot donuts straight off the conveyer [sic] belt," joked @RobertMSterling.
Popular account @uncledoomer claimed, "no parking spot is illegal on stolen land."
It wasn't long before people started to get absurd with it.
"Nobody is 'unemployed' on stolen land, mom," wrote @wirelyss.
"I refuse to get weather updates from a groundhog that sees its shadow on stolen land," said @stevensongs.
The LA-based Sinai Law Firm even wrote up an eviction notice against Billie Eilish, claiming to do so on behalf of the local Tongva tribe.
The tribe, however, made it pretty clear to the Daily Mail that they never consented to be a part of the joke and appreciate Eilish for her Grammys statement.
"As the First People of the greater Los Angeles basin, we do understand that her home is situated in our ancestral land," they said. "Eilish has not contacted our tribe directly regarding her property, we do value the instance when Public Figures provide visibility to the true history of this country."
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