The Grammy-winning producer defended his sister after she said ‘f— ICE’ and ‘no one is illegal on stolen land’ during her Grammys acceptance speech

Finneas O’Connell, a Grammy Award-winning producer and brother of Billie Eilish, slammed the “powerful old White men” who were “outraged” over his sister’s anti-ICE speech at the Grammys last Sunday.

Eilish’s brother took to Instagram Threads Wednesday to defend his sister after she faced backlash from conservatives for saying “f— ICE” and declaring that “no one is illegal on stolen land” while accepting the Grammy for Song of the Year at the 68th annual Grammy Awards.

“Seeing a lot of very powerful old White men outraged about what my 24-year-old sister said during her acceptance speech,” he wrote. “We can literally see your names in the Epstein files.”

Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas O’Connell, onstage at the Grammys last week. (Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty Images)

O’Connell joined Eilish on stage while she delivered her acceptance speech for her song “Wildflower,” which was produced and co-written by her brother.

“No one is illegal on stolen land,” Eilish said while wearing an “ICE OUT” pin. “I feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting. Our voices really do matter, and the people matter.”

“And f— ICE, that’s all I’m gonna say, sorry,” she added.

The following day, several critics, including federal lawmakers, called out the pop singer and suggested that she donate her million-dollar Los Angeles property back to Native Americans to return “stolen land.”

“Any White person who does a public ‘stolen land’ acknowledgment should immediately give his or her land to Native Americans. Otherwise, they don’t mean it. Also, I’m pretty sure they don’t mean it,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, wrote.

Prior to Eilish’s controversial Grammys speech, O’Connell stirred up some controversy of his own after he blasted conservatives on social media last week over what he considered to be a hypocritical response to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by a federal agent.

Finneas O’Connell attends the LACMA Art and Film Gala on Nov. 1, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Monica Schipper/FilmMagic)

The producer told conservatives to “shut the f— up” three times in an Instagram reel shared Sunday to his nearly 5 million followers.

His comments came on the heels of the fatal shooting of Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, who was shot during an immigration enforcement operation on Jan. 24.

In a fiery video, O’Connell criticized conservatives who, he said, routinely accept school shootings as a price of Second Amendment rights but are now pointing to Pretti’s legal firearm to justify his killing.

“The conservative argument that allows school shootings to continue has always basically boiled down to, ‘We have to protect the Second Amendment, we have to allow people to carry weapons,’” O’Connell said.

“Oh, some little kids die, that’s OK with them. Unf—— believable argument,” he continued. “Every argument I’ve seen for why Alex Pretti’s death was justified yesterday is like, ‘Well, he had a gun.’ Shut the f— up! You’ve spent 30 years straight telling us that children have to die so that we’re allowed to legally carry weapons.”

“This guy was being beaten to a pulp on the ground,” the producer said. “He didn’t draw his weapon. He had a weapon on him legally, and they shot the f— out of him and killed him. So shut the f— up!“