Milo Yiannopoulos held by ICE on final removal order

Milo Yiannopoulos, the British far-right commentator and former Breitbart editor, is in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana and faces removal from the country after overstaying his visa, the Department of Homeland Security said.

Agents arrested Yiannopoulos on Aug. 27 at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, according to DHS, which announced the detention the next day. He legally entered the United States on May 14, 2019, through New York City, then stayed on after his authorization to be in the country lapsed.

An immigration judge issued a final order of removal against him on July 22, 2026, after he failed to appear for a scheduled hearing. He will remain in ICE custody pending removal. The agency has not said when a deportation would take place or where he would be sent.

The government's account

In confirming the arrest, DHS said Yiannopoulos "chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation's laws," and it used the announcement to promote its self-deportation program. The department released a mugshot of him in a black T-shirt and framed detention as avoidable for anyone in the country illegally who chooses instead to leave voluntarily.

DHS says it is offering immigrants in the country illegally $3,000 and a free flight to leave voluntarily through an application called CBP Home. "Being in detention is a choice," the department wrote, warning that people who do not leave on their own would be arrested and deported without a chance to return.

DHS said the administration is "working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport." The statement made no mention of his own record on immigration.

TMZ first reported the arrest. Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, was scheduled to perform on the night of Aug. 28 at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, and the outlet reported that the concert may have been why Yiannopoulos was in Louisiana. Whether he was there for the show has not been confirmed.

Years in MAGA circles

Yiannopoulos served as Ye's chief of staff and worked on the rapper's short-lived 2024 presidential campaign, and TMZ has described him as director of political operations for the bid. He also worked at Ye's Yeezy clothing brand, resigning in May 2024 after the rapper announced an adult entertainment studio under the label.

A former editor at Breitbart, the outlet Trump once counted among his favorite news sources, Yiannopoulos resigned in 2017 after footage surfaced of remarks appearing to condone sexual relationships between adults and boys as young as 13. He denied supporting pedophilia and said some of his comments were wrong.

He served as an unpaid intern to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2022, the year he took credit for arranging a Mar-a-Lago dinner between Trump, Ye and the white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

ICE's online detainee locator listed Yiannopoulos in custody on the afternoon of Aug. 28 but did not specify where he was being held, according to the agency's database. He is 41 and was born in England.

His immigration status had become a target for others on the right long before ICE acted on it.

Loomer claims credit

Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and Trump ally, said on X that she had reported Yiannopoulos to ICE and the FBI and that she had exposed what she called "his illegal alien lifestyle." She has long pressed for his deportation.

Loomer wrote that Yiannopoulos "incited violence against President Trump" and worked for Greene, whom she called "Marjorie Traitor Greene." She also pointed to his recent appearances on the podcast of the commentator Candace Owens.

ICE has not confirmed Loomer's account, and it has not announced plans to deport Yiannopoulos or named a destination. Her post appeared alongside a photo of him with Greene, and she separately called for the Justice Department to investigate the former congresswoman for hiring and harboring him. The Telegraph reported that his visa status was understood to have come to officials' attention after he fell out of favor over increasingly hostile remarks.

Greene has not publicly commented on the arrest, and the White House referred questions to DHS.

A record he championed

Yiannopoulos spent much of 2025 urging on the enforcement campaign that has now caught him. In June he called for ICE checkpoints across California and on-the-spot deportations for anyone who could not prove legal status, attaching an image that read "papers please."

Five days after Trump's second inauguration, he questioned on X why ICE had not moved faster, arguing that 90,000 employees could handle 10,000 deportations a day. In a June post he said the country had "got to deport millions and millions and millions of people," adding that without it nothing else mattered.

In October 2025, according to Reason, he taunted that he was making sure "the right people" knew to deport Mehdi Hasan, a left-leaning commentator and naturalized U.S. citizen.

Where the case stands

Yiannopoulos already carries a final order of removal, the last step before deportation for someone who has missed or exhausted the immigration court process. That order was entered because he did not appear at the July hearing, DHS said, and it converts an ordinary overstay into a case ICE can act on immediately. He remained in the agency's custody on Aug. 28.

On August 27, ICE arrested Milo Yiannopoulos, an illegal alien from the United Kingdom, at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) in Kenner, Louisiana.

The department's framing, calling him an illegal alien and pointing to voluntary departure, matched the language it uses across the broader deportation drive. On the government's own account, Yiannopoulos entered legally and lost his status by overstaying, not by crossing the border unlawfully, a distinction the announcement did not dwell on.

Late on Aug. 28 Loomer said Yiannopoulos was on a plane back to Britain, a claim ICE has not confirmed.

A career of provocation

Yiannopoulos was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 after being accused of inciting a harassment campaign against the actress Leslie Jones. The Anti-Defamation League has called him an "alt right apologist" and a misogynistic, racist, xenophobic and transphobic troll. His account was reinstated in May 2024, some 18 months after Elon Musk bought the platform, now called X.

He has rebranded repeatedly since his 2017 fall. In 2021 he declared himself "ex-gay," renounced homosexuality and promoted conversion therapy, a discredited practice, having married a man in Hawaii in 2017. In a December 2025 interview with Tucker Carlson he called "mainstreaming homosexuality in the Republican Party" the great regret of his life.

Some on the right have turned on him. The conservative podcaster Benny Johnson wrote on X that Yiannopoulos "was working for the Left to divide, slander and lie about Trump's coalition to break it apart," accusing him of smearing the late Charlie Kirk days after Kirk's death. Yiannopoulos, who claims Jewish ancestry through a grandmother while practicing Roman Catholicism, has drawn scrutiny for antisemitic remarks.

As of Aug. 28 Yiannopoulos was held under a final removal order, and the agency had not said when he would be deported or offered a public timeline. DHS said only that he would stay in detention pending removal.