At the 68th Grammy Awards on Feb. 1, 2026, the award-winning singer Billie Eilish drew media attention for a remark she made during her acceptance speech after her track "Wildflower" won song of the year.
Eilish, wearing a pin that read, "ICE OUT," said (archived), "As grateful as I feel, I honestly don't feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land." Eilish's "ICE OUT" pin was a reference to the mass deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents under the administration of President Donald Trump.
Eilish's mention of "stolen land" appeared to refer to land that the U.S. or other governments appropriated from Native American tribes throughout history. "No one is illegal on stolen land" is a phrase commonly used by immigration-enforcement protesters and invokes the polarizing term "illegal" about people without legal status in the U.S.
Days after Eilish's win and remark, a pair of X posts (archived, archived) from a Los Angeles law firm circulated online. According to the posts, Sinai Law Firm offered to evict Eilish "pro bono" on behalf of a local Native American tribe after her "admission that she lives on stolen land." The posts read:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sinai Law Firm is offering to evict Billie Eilish from her Los Angeles home on a pro bono basis on behalf of the Tongva Tribe.
Sinai Law Firm is the premier eviction firm in the county.
Eilish's admission that she lives on stolen land gives the tribe a rightful action for possession as the true owner of the property.
The 30-day notice is already written and ready to be served.
(X user @SinaiLawFirm)
The posts also circulated on X (archived), Facebook, Instagram, Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers wrote in, asking whether Eilish would be evicted.
At the time of this writing, there was no indication that Sinai Law Firm, run by eviction attorney Avi Sinai, would actually attempt to evict Eilish. In a third post (archived) around 12 hours after the two seen above, the firm wrote, "Incredibly concerning to me that people in media are reaching to me as if this is a serious post," and appeared to indicate that the initial posts were intended as a joke.
We contacted Sinai Law Firm to confirm that the offer to evict Eilish was not genuine. The law firm sent us back a link to the third post, cited above. Therefore, we rate the claim false.
In a separate post (archived), Sinai Law Firm claimed that Eilish's remark was "empty virtue signaling" because "no elected official is giving the land back to the tongva just like Billie eilish is not going to get evicted nor will she give her house back." The post further signaled that the law firm's initial post about offering to evict Eilish was not meant to be taken seriously.
There was no indication that the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation, which describes itself on its website as "the aboriginal tribe of the Los Angeles Basin and the true First Angelenos," wished to evict Eilish. Fox News reported that a spokesperson from the tribe said in a statement that Eilish had not been in touch to discuss her properties, but that "we do value the instance when Public Figures provide visibility to the true history of this country."
We reached out to representatives for Eilish to ask whether Sinai or any other law firm had threatened her with eviction on behalf of Native American tribes. We also reached out to the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation to confirm that EIlish's reported properties were located within their ancestral lands, and whether they wished to evict her. We await replies to our queries.
Is Los Angeles County tribal land?
Eilish reportedly owns at least two multimillion-dollar properties in Los Angeles County, which historically belonged to the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation. According to the State of California Native American Heritage Commission, the tribe historically occupied a 4,000-square-mile-plus region in what is now known as the Greater Los Angeles Basin.
At the time of this writing, the tribe was seeking federal recognition to establish a reservation, according to its website. Once federally recognized, it intended to buy back ancestral lands for this purpose, amounting to "less than .005%" of the historical Tovangar. It was unclear whether Eilish's reported properties were located on any of the land the tribe intended to buy back.
Land returns to Native American tribes are ongoing in California. The state awarded more than $100 million to 33 tribal land projects in 2024 with the aim of returning ancestral lands to local tribes.
The Yurok Tribe, one of the recipients of the 2024 awards, reported in June 2025 that state authorities had returned 73 square miles of land to the ownership of the tribe in what it called "the largest single 'land back' deal in California history."
At the time of this writing, no such deal appeared imminent for the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation, whose ancestral lands are now the site of one of the biggest cities in the U.S.
Snopes previously reported that Billie Eilish wore a pin calling for ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War to the 2024 Oscars and investigated a claim that she replaced actor Jenna Ortega in the Netflix TV series "Wednesday."