Guardian US news reported that the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Milo Yiannopoulos had been deported from the US to the UK on Friday, one day after his arrest at an airport in New Orleans. The agency had publicized the arrest on Thursday and highlighted it again on Friday. By Saturday morning, Yiannopoulos’s name had been taken off a list of people held in ICE detention. The British commentator may have travelled to New Orleans for a concert by Ye, formerly Kanye West, at the city’s Caesars Superdome.
Tom Homan rejected the suggestion that the rapid removal amounted to preferential treatment. Homan said his understanding was that Yiannopoulos, 41, had stayed beyond what he believed was a visitor visa, missed an immigration hearing and received a final removal order on 22 July. He said the order came from an immigration judge and that ICE was carrying it out. The speed of the removal drew questions because other deportees have spent long periods in detention centers before being sent away.
Homan said the Department of Homeland Security was seeking to accelerate removals by reducing waits for travel documents and flight arrangements. He described the intended approach as removing people quickly after an order, without regard to who they are, while making detention beds available for other detainees. During a CNN interview, host Dana Bash asked whether Laura Loomer had alerted ICE that Yiannopoulos no longer had permission to remain in the US.
Homan said numerous people had contacted ICE and that Loomer may have been one of them, but maintained that any such tip did not affect the removal order. The source noted that Loomer and Yiannopoulos had publicly fallen out, while Yiannopoulos had previously cheered the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. Homan also denied that the administration had selected Yiannopoulos to make an example of him, arguing that deportations were not determined by political affiliation.