Earlier this month, on the day of the Super Bowl, ICE arrested 21 Savage in Atlanta, revealing that the rapper was born in the UK and that he was in the US on an expired visa. That arrest caused a wave of outrage against ICE. 21 Savage had come to the US with his family as a child. Savage’s lawyers said that he’d applied for a new visa in 2017 and that the process was still ongoing. But ICE still targeted Savage directly, causing many of us to wonder whether they’d arrested him specifically to send a message. Earlier this week, nine days after his arrest, Savage was released on bond. And the next day, he sat down for an interview with Good Morning America’s Linsey Davis. The interview aired this morning.

Speaking with Davis, Savage talked about his immigration status, how his visa came to lapse:

I ain’t know what a visa was. I was seven when I first came here. I knew I wasn’t born here, but I didn’t know what that meant as far as when I transitioned into an adult, how it would affect my life. I wasn’t hiding it, but it’s like, I didn’t want to get deported. So I’m not finna just come out like, “Oh, by the way, I wasn’t born here, world.”

Savage, of course, doesn’t believe that his arrest was just:

I’ve been here 20 years, 19 years. This is all I know. I don’t feel like you should be arrested and put in a place where a murderer would be just for being in the country for too long…. I don’t think the policy is broken. I feel like the way they enforce the policy is broken.

There is some question whether Savage was targeted because of something he said on a song. A couple of days before his arrest, Savage released the video for his track “A Lot.” On that song, he raps a line about the US immigration system: “Went through some things, but I couldn’t imagine my kids stuck at the border. When Davis asks Savage whether he thinks he was targeted because of his music, he says, “My lawyers think that… I don’t really know. I can’t really say. I would see why people would think that, but I really can’t say.” But he did hear ICE agents talking about arresting him, specifically, and using his stage name: “They didn’t say nothing. They just said, ‘We got Savage.’… It was definitely targeted.”

Also on Good Morning America, George Stephanopoulos sat down with Alex Spiro, one of Savage’s lawyers, who nicely summed up the puzzling intricacies of the case:

Part of the reason [for the arrest], we think, is he’s both a celebrity — and they can use this as a way to send a message — and also, perhaps, because of his music…

There’s a lot of things about this case that are curious and troubling. Even if you start at the beginning, he’s somebody who comes here as a young man, who’s one of the Dreamers, as they’re called. And he comes over here, and he has a singular offense for marijuana when he’s a college-age person. That’s vacated, sealed. There’s no issue. He’s getting a visa. He’s operating in good faith. He’s performing. He’s giving back to his community. He’s a son. He’s a father. And yet they take this step, this unusual step, to arrest him the week before the Grammys and not give him bond. And we find the whole thing curious and troubling…

He’s certainly vulnerable [to deportation], but we’re confident, and his fans should be confident that he’ll be able to remain here. And we’re hoping that that will be able to give some hope to everybody who fights these issues…

The message is that we can’t forget about the people that don’t have the resources, that don’t have the fame, to fight for their freedom, both in the criminal system and in the immigration system. There’s people that are just totally forgotten that exist in these detention centers. And people like Jay-Z — he stepped in for Meek Mill, and he stepped in here. And now I’m hoping that people like 21 Savage will bring light to these issues and help the people that are forgotten.

Here’s the full video of the segment: