The White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, denied on Sunday that the British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was deported just a day after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for political reasons. Homan said it was his understanding that Yiannopoulos, 41, had overstayed what he believed to be a visitor visa, had not appeared at an immigration hearing and was issued a final order of removal on 22 July. So, once ICE gets an order of deportation from a federal judge, their job is to execute that order, and that’s what they did.” He added: “He had his due process, ordered removed by a federal judge, and ICE removed him.
It’s that simple.” Yiannopoulos’s removal one day after his arrest, when many others who have been deported had first endured lengthy detention center incarcerations, has prompted questions about whether he received preferential treatment in that respect. Homan said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, was trying to speed up the deportation process. He continued: “As soon as we get an order removal, our goal is remove them as quick as possible, regardless of who they are.
Open those beds up for more detainees.” DHS had quickly publicized Yiannopoulos’s arrest on Thursday at an airport in New Orleans – where he may have travelled to attend a concert by rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, on Friday at the city’s Caesars Superdome. Officials with DHS touted Yiannopoulos’s arrest on Friday. By Saturday morning, Yiannopoulos’s name was removed from a list of people in ICE detention, and DHS confirmed that he had been deported to the UK on Friday – one day after his arrest.
CNN host Dana Bash asked Homan if the rightwing influencer Laura Loomer had, as she claimed, tipped off ICE that Yiannopoulos’s permission to be in the US had expired. He was ordered removed by an immigration judge, and ICE’s job it to execute that order.” Loomer and Yiannopoulos – who had sanguinely cheered the Trump administration’s deportation efforts before his expulsion from the US – had publicly fallen out. Homan, meanwhile, denied that the Trump administration had made an example of Yiannopoulos to send a message.
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