Milo Yiannopoulos, the British far-right provocateur who for years championed President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda, has been deported and now says he is “very ashamed” that he ever supported the president.
His reversal, delivered from Britain after Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed him last week, is a striking turn for a figure who once called for the very tactics that ensnared him.
Yiannopoulos made the comments in an interview with British broadcaster Piers Morgan, released Tuesday on YouTube. “If I had any clue that anything remotely like this was even possible, I would never have got involved in supporting Trump in the first place, and I’m very ashamed that I did,” he said, in remarks reported by NoTus and The Hill.
He was detained by ICE on August 27 at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and, according to the Department of Homeland Security, removed for overstaying his visa; an immigration judge had issued a final order of removal in July.
The reversal is notable precisely because of who is making it.
Yiannopoulos rose to prominence as an editor at Breitbart News and became one of the most recognizable provocateurs of the pro-Trump right during the 2016 campaign, building a following on incendiary attacks against Muslims, women, and immigrants, according to The Hill and the Associated Press. Until recently, he was among the loudest civilian boosters of the administration’s mass-deportation drive, the same machinery that removed him.
He now describes the experience in the language many immigrants have used.
Yiannopoulos told Morgan he was “really, really terrified” after his arrest, recounting to CNN’s report of the interview that his hands and feet were chained and calling the ordeal “humiliating” and “physically degrading.” He said he had not grasped “the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America,” and offered what he framed as newfound sympathy: he admitted he had once been “a little bit blase” when others described their trauma, telling Morgan, according to CNN, “I get it now, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
Yiannopoulos’s regret drew little sympathy online, where his years of celebrating harsh enforcement were quickly recalled. A Brookings Institution fellow, Jessica Riedl, responded on X with a single reference to the internet meme about people harmed by the very things they championed, and one user summed up the mood by writing that Yiannopoulos had supported the crackdown when he thought it would only affect other people. His account of events has also been contested: while he told Morgan the government canceled a work permit “without telling me,” DHS has said he overstayed his visa after legally entering in May 2019, and separately that a green-card issue was involved, details he disputes.
His detention has also reignited feuds on the right, drawing the activist Laura Loomer, who claimed credit for reporting him to immigration authorities, into a renewed clash with former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, according to Mediaite.
Yiannopoulos, 41, was returned to the United Kingdom.
He told Morgan he is married to an American and believes he could have found a company to sponsor him if given the chance, and he said he intends to contest his removal. The Department of Homeland Security has maintained that it removed him for overstaying his visa after he legally entered the country in May 2019.
https://ctninfo.com/maga-supporter-a…-he-backed-trump/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/far-provocateur-deported-ice-very-212909787.html
