Updated ,first published
Washington: British far-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos has been arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana and is being held in detention.
The Department of Homeland Security said Yiannopoulos “chose to overstay his welcome” after arriving in the US legally in 2019.
“Yiannopoulos was issued a final order of removal by an Immigration Judge on July 22, after failing to show up for his immigration hearing,” DHS said. “He will remain in ICE custody pending removal.”
DHS posted Yiannopoulos’ mugshot on X and said he was arrested on Thursday (US time) at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. Online ICE records showed he was being held but did not indicate which facility.
Entertainment website TMZ, which was first to report the arrest, suggested Yiannopoulos may have been in Louisiana with rapper Ye – better known as Kanye West – with whom the British commentator has sometimes worked. Ye is scheduled to perform in New Orleans on Friday night, local time.
Yiannopoulos came to prominence as an editor at the far-right US website Breitbart News, where his targets typically included feminism and Islam.
He corresponded and associated with various far-right figures and white nationalists and was banned from numerous social media platforms.
Yiannapoulos was sacked from Breitbart and ostracised from mainstream conservative arenas after he defended the idea of sexual relationships between adult men and teenage boys as young as 13 in certain circumstances.
In 2019, he was denied a visa to enter Australia for a speaking tour after he said that the Christchurch mosque massacre occurred because the establishment “panders to and mollycoddles extremist leftism and barbaric, alien religious cultures”.
The 2019 mass shootings in Christchurch killed 51 people, all Muslim worshippers. They were perpetrated by an Australian white supremacist, Brenton Tarrant.
In recent years, Yiannopoulos reportedly worked as Ye’s chief of staff while the rapper embraced Nazism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Earlier this year, Ye apologised and expressed regret over his actions, attributing them to his bipolar disorder.
The British provocateur also rebranded himself as an “ex-gay” – though he said he didn’t like the term – and floated the idea of opening a “reparative therapy” clinic in Florida.
Last year, Yiannpoulos expressed support on social media for ICE and the deportations being ordered by the Trump administration.
“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,” he posted from his X account in June 2025.
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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