Milo Yiannopoulos, far right political commentator, former Trump supporter and supposedly ex-gay, was detained yesterday (Thursday, Aug. 27) by agents with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security.
ABC Channel 7 Eyewitness News, a New York City news station, reported that Yiannopoulos was arrested at New Orleans International Airport.
The DHS spokesperson explained that Yiannopoulos, who is British, entered the country legally in 2019, he “chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.”
Yiannopoulos was “issued a final order of removal by an immigration judge on July 22 after failing to show up for his immigration hearing,” the spokesperson added. “He will remain in ICE custody pending removal.”
Yiannopoulos had been a vocal supporter of immigration enforcement. Last year, in fact, he called for ICE checkpoints and “on the spot deportation” of anyone unable to prove legal status, according to reports by Irish Times.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Face, meet leopards.)
The DHS spokesperson said that Yiannopoulos, who was in Louisiana ahead of a Kanye West concert, was being held at an ICE detention facility in Alexandria, La.
Far-right “activist” Laura Loomer has taken credit for pointing out that Yiannopoulos had overstayed his visa.
Yiannopoulos, who will be 42 in October, is a former editor for Breitbart News, leaving the right-wing news and opinion website in 2017 after video clips circulated in which he said that sexual relationships between 13-year-old boys and adults could be “perfectly consensual” and positive experiences for the boys. He later condemned sexual abuse and claimed that he was referring to gay male adolescents rather than prepubescent boys, and that his comments were his humorous way of handling his own sexual abuse at the hands of a priest.
Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter in July 2016 for harassing Leslie Jones online, and he was permanently banned from Facebook in 2019. He was a congressional intern for then-U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2022, and later worked with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and with Kanye West during West’s short-lived president campaign in 2024.
Yiannopoulos resigned from his job at Yeezy Apparel — West’s company — in 2024 after West announced he was adding an adult entertainment division top his company. However, as of this year, Yiannopoulos was once again working with West as the rapper’s spokesperson and legal liaison.
Gay no more
Yiannopoulos, who was at the time a U.S. resident alien on O-1 visa status, married his long-term boyfriend in Hawaii in September 2017. But four years later, in March 2021, Yiannopoulos told rightwing publication LifeSiteNews that he was no longer gay and his husband was now just his housemate.
That same year, Yiannopoulos announced he had converted to Catholicism — he had previously claimed to be Jewish. As of April this year, he and his estranged husband were in the middle of a divorce case.
— Tammye Nash