Well, this is an interesting turn of events.
Milo Yiannopoulos, the British right-wing provocateur who spent years demanding tougher immigration enforcement, has now been detained by the very agency whose powers he once championed.
The Department of Homeland Security said Yiannopoulos was arrested Thursday at a Louisiana airport and remained in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody as of Friday afternoon.
According to DHS, Yiannopoulos legally entered the United States in 2019 but subsequently overstayed his authorized period of stay.
The agency said an immigration judge issued a final order of removal against him on July 22 after Yiannopoulos failed to appear for an immigration hearing.
“He will remain in ICE custody pending removal,” DHS said in a post on X.
In other words, the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement machine has apparently come for one of the people who spent years cheering it on.
Yiannopoulos has been an outspoken supporter of aggressive immigration enforcement.
Just last year, he called for ICE checkpoints in California supermarkets and other public places, along with “on the spot deportation for anyone who can’t prove they are in the US legally.”
He also called for “total legal immunity for ICE agents when they’re on duty.”
Now he’s experiencing the system from the other side.
Yiannopoulos rose to prominence as one of the most recognizable — and controversial — figures associated with the American right during the rise of Donald Trump.
He became a prominent supporter of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign and even headlined an event called Gays for Trump during the Republican National Convention.
At one point, he was so closely associated with Trump’s political movement that he sometimes referred to the president as “Daddy.”
But the relationship between Yiannopoulos and Trump’s movement eventually became more complicated.
In March, Yiannopoulos wrote on X that Trump “has lost his way, bought off by foreign interests.”
That didn’t stop him from continuing to support major elements of Trump’s agenda.
His career has long revolved around provocation.
Yiannopoulos gained national attention through controversial appearances and a campus speaking tour he called the “Dangerous F*ggot” tour, which he said was intended to promote free speech and challenge what he considered liberal dominance at American universities.
His comments about Muslims, transgender people, feminists, Black Americans and gay people generated widespread outrage, with critics accusing him of deliberately using inflammatory and hateful rhetoric to provoke controversy.
His appearances also sparked protests across the country.
A planned Yiannopoulos event at the University of California, Berkeley, in February 2017 was canceled after a large protest turned violent and destructive. The university said two Republican students were attacked during the unrest.
That same year, Yiannopoulos’ career suffered another major blow.
He was disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference after the emergence of video footage in which he appeared to make comments that were widely interpreted as condoning sexual relationships between adults and minors.
Yiannopoulos denied the allegations and said he had been discussing his own experiences as a child. He later apologized and resigned from Breitbart.
He had previously worked as an editor at Breitbart News and later became associated with rapper Kanye West.
At the height of his fame, Yiannopoulos was frequently described as part of the “alt-right,” a loose political movement that included figures ranging from anti-establishment conservatives to white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Yiannopoulos rejected the label, although he once described the movement as **“energising and exciting.”**
He eventually faded from the center of American political attention.
Now he’s back in the headlines for something that has little to do with his old campus battles.
According to DHS, it’s immigration.
And there’s an unmistakable irony in that.
Yiannopoulos spent years arguing that people who were in the United States illegally should face aggressive enforcement. He called for immigration checkpoints in ordinary public spaces and supported immediate deportation for people unable to prove their legal status.
Now ICE says he himself is subject to removal after allegedly overstaying his immigration status and failing to appear for his immigration hearing.
The circumstances surrounding his detention were not immediately clear beyond DHS’s account.
Yiannopoulos’ name appears in ICE’s detainee locator, according to reports, and the agency says he will remain in custody while removal proceedings move forward.
