Milo Yiannopoulos Is in a Louisiana ICE Facility Under a Removal Order He Never Showed Up to Fight
The British commentator, a longtime advocate of aggressive deportation, was picked up near New Orleans. DHS says he entered legally in 2019 and overstayed.
Milo Yiannopoulos, the British far-right commentator who spent years arguing that the United States should deport people faster, is being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana under a final order of removal, according to U.S. officials and agency records.
Yiannopoulos was apprehended in the New Orleans area and taken to an ICE facility in Louisiana, where he is being held pending removal. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said he entered the country legally in 2019 but "chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation's laws."
The order against him was issued on July 22 by an immigration judge, and it was issued in absentia: Yiannopoulos did not appear for his immigration hearing. Under federal immigration law, failing to show for a removal hearing generally results in an automatic order of removal, and reopening such an order requires the noncitizen to prove exceptional circumstances or a defect in how notice was served — a high bar that must usually be cleared within a tight filing window.
He was in New Orleans ahead of a concert featuring the artist formerly known as Kanye West, now Ye, with whom Yiannopoulos has worked on various projects. His detention was first reported by TMZ. The case was reported by CBS News correspondents Nicole Sganga and Jacob Rosen, with contributions from Kathryn Watson.
The DHS spokesperson's public comment on the case did not treat Yiannopoulos as a special matter. "Being in detention is a choice," the spokesperson said, repeating the agency's standing message that people in the country illegally should use the CBP Home App to leave on their own — an offer the department has advertised with "$3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now."
The irony is not lost on either side of the immigration fight. Yiannopoulos built a public career in the United States as a provocateur who called for hard enforcement of the very statutes now being used against him, and he did it as a foreign national on a temporary status. He first drew mass attention in 2016 when he was permanently suspended from Twitter for orchestrating a campaign of racist abuse against the comedian Leslie Jones. He has since cycled through political jobs on the American right, including a stint working for Ye during that campaign's collapse into antisemitic statements.
Barring a successful motion to reopen, the mechanics from here are routine. A final removal order authorizes ICE to obtain travel documents and place him on a flight, in this case to the United Kingdom, of which he is a citizen — a process that for a national of a cooperative country typically takes weeks, not years.
Originally reported by CBS News.