Cardi B has traded barbs online with the Department of Homeland Security.
The rapper and the US government beefed on social media this week, after Cardi sounded off on Immigration and Customs Enforcement's spree of arrests.
On Wednesday, Cardi, 33, told fans at her Little Miss Drama Tour concert in Palm Desert, California she would "throw hands" if any ICE agents arrived at her gigs.
"B***h, If ICE comes in here, we gon' jump they a*ses," she reportedly said on stage. "I've got some bear mace in the back! They ain't taking my fans, b***h."
In response, a representative from the DHS, which controls ICE, then linked to a news article about Cardi's outburst, accompanied by the statement, "As long she doesn't drug and rob our agents, we'll consider that an improvement over her past behavior".
The caption was a reference to a 2019 social-media post in which Cardi addressed confessions she had drugged and robbed men in hotel rooms when she worked as a stripper.
"Whether or not they were poor choices at the time, I did what I had to do to survive" she wrote, of those days before she found fame in the music industry. "I never claimed to be perfect or come from a perfect world... I have a past I can't change that".
When DHS resurfaced the topic, Cardi - whose full name is Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar - was quick to hit back with a stinging comment about the government's approach to the release of evidence files relating to the late, accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
"If we talking about drugs let's talk about Epstein and friends drugging underage girls to rape them," she wrote. "Why y'all don't wanna talk about the Epstein files?"
Since the Department of Justice's release of more than three million files from 30 January, a number of powerful figures have been identified.
While US President Donald Trump's name allegedly appears more than 4,000 times in the documents, he has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein, and said he ceased communication with the convicted sex offender decades ago.
