21 Savage made a generous donation of $25,000 to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit organization that helped him during his battle with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
What We Know:
- The rapper presented the $25,000 check to the SPLC to ensure that detained immigrants in the South will have access to legal help. Only around 17 percent of immigrants in Southeast detainment centers have access to an attorney, according to the SPLC.
- “21 Savage is making this donation public because everyday Americans need to know that ICE is using civil immigration detention as a weapon against immigrants, many of whom, like 21 Savage, have relief from deportation and are able to fix their immigration status,” said Charles Kuck, the rapper’s attorney.
- 21 was arrested and detained by ICE earlier in the year. Immigration officials said the rapper—birth name She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph—was born in the United Kingdom and was in America illegally after his visa expired. He was in the U.S. under an H-4 visa that expired in 2006 but reportedly applied for a visa in 2017. The application was still under review during his arrest, according to Complex. He was released on bond less than two weeks later.
- “There are people in detention centers just sitting for months and even years not being able to see their families. Then some of those people just end up being sent off overnight to a place they ain’t never really lived and they don’t ever see their family after that,” the rapper said during an interview with Paper magazine.
He’s come along way from having ‘no heart.’
