Samuel Sey, a conservative blogger who built a following as an outspoken defender of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has himself been detained by the agency and is being held in an Ohio jail pending removal from the United States.
Samuel Sey, 39, the writer behind the blog SlowToWrite, was arrested on October 21 and booked into the Butler County Jail, where he is being held for ICE, according to the Daily Beast, which first reported his detention in an article by Annabella Rosciglione. The jail’s website listed him as booked that day and still in custody for the agency.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE arrested Sey — described by the agency as “an illegal alien from Ghana” — at Columbus International Airport. Sey “entered the United States legally in 2022 but overstayed his length of admission by over four years, in violation of our nation’s laws,” the spokesperson said, adding that he had no pending immigration applications and had “accepted voluntary departure.” “He will remain in ICE custody until removed from the United States,” the statement said. “We do not pick and choose which laws to enforce or where to enforce them.”
The department used the announcement to promote its self-deportation campaign, saying it is offering people in the country without legal status $3,000 and a free flight to leave voluntarily through the CBP Home App, and warning that those who do not will be “arrested and deported without a chance to return.”
Sey’s supporters describe his circumstances differently.
A fundraising page created on his behalf on GiveSendGo said he was detained by ICE while traveling and called him “a husband, father, school teacher, married to Annie with three beautiful children,” who “has been living here as a legal resident of the United States from Canada.” His wife is working to secure his release on bail, the page said, “so he can fix any clerical issues that need to be addressed for his legal residence.” Sey announced on social media in 2022 that he had obtained a marriage license to wed Annie, the Daily Beast reported.
The two accounts diverge on the central question. DHS portrays Sey as a Ghanaian national who overstayed a lawful admission; the family’s fundraiser describes him as a legal U.S. resident who came from Canada and whose paperwork needs correcting. CTN could not independently verify either characterization, and the Daily Beast’s reporting is the basis for the details here.
Sey’s detention drew notice because of his record as an ardent backer of ICE. On his blog and on social media, he has repeatedly defended the agency and its officers. “If you love America, you should support ICE,” he wrote in one post cited by the Daily Beast.
He has often framed opposition to immigration enforcement in religious terms. In one post he wrote that “anti-ICE protestors are influenced by Satan,” and in another that God “is also against the idealogy of anti-ICE protestors,” using a misspelling of “ideology,” arguing that Christians who condemn protesters but not their beliefs were missing the point.
After Renee Good, a Minnesota mother, was shot and killed in her car by an ICE agent in January, Sey echoed talking points asserting that she had tried to ram agents — a claim that was contradicted by video evidence. “The woman would still be alive if she didn’t try to run the ICE agent over,” he wrote, describing the shooting as self-defense.
Sey has not been uniformly aligned with the broader movement. He has at times criticized President Trump, particularly over the president’s shifting positions on abortion, writing in a 2024 post that it was “a sobering sign of God’s judgment on America” that Trump remained, in his view, a better option than his opponent.
https://ctninfo.com/?p=45087&preview=true
Source: The Daily Beast
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