Right-wing influencer Milo Yiannopoulos has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Louisiana.
The British firebrand, who served as Kanye West's chief of staff and currently acts as his publicist, was taken into custody on Thursday and is now being held at a detention center in Louisiana pending deportation.
In an official statement shared with the Daily Mail on Friday afternoon, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that Yiannopoulos entered the country in May 2019 and subsequently "overstayed his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws."
Federal officials stated that Yiannopoulos was issued a final order of removal by an Immigration Judge on July 22 after failing to show up for his scheduled immigration hearing. He will remain in ICE custody pending removal from the country.
The agency added that the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump has reversed Biden-era policies regarding immigration enforcement. ICE stated that DHS will no longer tolerate unauthorized immigrants traveling domestically, working diligently to ensure that individuals in the country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of the country to self-deport.
Government records obtained by CBS and statements from U.S. officials confirm Yiannopoulos faces a final order of removal after being seized in the New Orleans area. Inmate records and reporting from TMZ also indicate he is being held at a detention center in Louisiana. The Daily Mail attempted to reach out to Yiannopoulos for further comment.
Visa History and Immigration Status
In 2017, Yiannopoulos stated publicly that he was living in the United States on an O-1 nonimmigrant visa. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy manual, O-1 visas are granted to individuals possessing an "extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics," as well as those with extraordinary achievement in motion pictures or television.
O-1 visas require official sponsorship by an employer or agent. It remains unconfirmed how Yiannopoulos maintained his legal status in the years following his arrival in May 2019.
Yiannopoulos exchanged vows in Hawaii in 2017 with a black man whom he publicly identified only as "John," carefully concealing his partner's full identity. Because of this privacy, it was never confirmed whether Yiannopoulos became eligible to obtain American citizenship or a green card through marriage to a U.S. national.
Yiannopoulos has characterized himself as "ex-gay" since 2021 and has commenced divorce proceedings with his husband.
Calls for Mass Deportation
Ironically, since his rise to fame as a political commentator, Yiannopoulos has been a staunch advocate of immigration restriction and mass deportations. During the second Trump presidency, he was vocal in urging ICE to step up its expulsion of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
In a post on social media platform X last June, Yiannopoulos insisted on aggressive deportation measures. "There is one concrete thing we must insist on this administration delivering," he wrote. "It matters a lot more than debts measured in imaginary money. We have got to deport millions and millions and millions of people. Without that, nothing else matters."
Three days later, he called for widespread checkpoints, writing on X: "California needs ICE checkpoints at supermarket entrances, gas stations, strip malls, intersections and government buildings, with on the spot deportation for anyone who can’t prove they are in the US legally."
Political Campaign Work
Yiannopoulos has enjoyed a long-standing association with rapper Kanye West, acting as director of political operations on West's 2024 U.S. presidential campaign before taking on his current role as publicist.
In November 2022, during his time as West's political advisor, Yiannopoulos helped arrange the rapper's controversial summit at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump and self-described "white identitarian" streaming star Nick Fuentes.
Yiannopoulos has since dramatically fallen out with Fuentes, whom he now relentlessly derides on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Client Travel Bans and Cancelled Concerts
His own reported ICE troubles come after his client, West, was banned from Yiannopoulos' native Britain over antisemitic diatribes that torpedoed his career, including praise for Adolf Hitler and a vow to go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE."
West took out a full-page advertisement apologizing for the comments in the Wall Street Journal this January, three months before he was prohibited from entering the United Kingdom. He had been scheduled to headline a music festival at Finsbury Park in London that was called off altogether after his appearance there became impossible.
West has also seen planned concerts canceled in Poland and France this year as a result of the continuing backlash to his tirades about Jews, as well as a past embrace of Nazi iconography so extravagant that he released a single called Heil Hitler and sold merchandise splashed with swastikas.
West was set to perform at the Gazprom Arena in St Petersburg in October, which would have made him the highest-profile Western artist to play Russia since the outbreak of the Ukraine War, but those shows were also abruptly scrapped amid political blowback. However, he has been able to stage concerts in America, as well as in Mexico, Turkey, Georgia and Kazakhstan.
In his Wall Street Journal ad, West blamed his antisemitic remarks on his infamous 2002 car crash, which he claimed left him with brain damage that went unnoticed and led to the development of his subsequently diagnosed bipolar disorder.
