The far-right British commentator sat with interviewer Piers Morgan after being detained by US immigration authorities.
Far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos detained by ICE
Far-right British commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, who once embraced United States President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, has made his first public remarks after his US arrest and deportation.
In an interview released on Tuesday, Yiannopoulos spoke to host Piers Morgan about his experience, telling the interviewer that he now knows what it’s like to be “really, really terrified”.
“I didn’t really understand the physical reality of how institutionalised the brutality is in America,” Yiannopoulos said.
As he described having his hands and feet chained together while in custody, he criticised immigration authorities for treating ordinary detainees like criminals.
“Everybody arrested is like an MS-13 gang member, and it hurts a lot more than it looks like on television,” he said of the manacles he was forced to wear.
Yiannopoulos was arrested by US federal agents after arriving at the airport in New Orleans, Louisiana, last Thursday. The 41-year-old conservative firebrand was subsequently sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in a process he called “humiliating” and “disorienting”.
“It was frightening, and I don’t think I’ve ever been frightened like that before,” Yiannopoulos said.
Yiannopoulos allegedly entered the US legally on May 14, 2019.
But afterwards, Yiannopoulos overstayed his visa, according to the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It claimed Yiannopoulos was issued a deportation order in July after he missed a scheduled immigration hearing.
White House border tsar Tom Homan echoed that assertion in an interview with CNN on Sunday, saying it was Yiannopoulos’s fault he was deported.
“He was ordered to appear in immigration court. He didn’t show up. The judge ordered him deported,” Homan told CNN’s Dana Bash. “He had his due process order removed by a federal judge, and I removed him. It’s that simple.”
In his interview with Morgan, Yiannopoulos claimed Homan was lying and suggested that his shifting politics could have been a factor in his deportation.
“I don’t really do, you know, the right-wing provocateur thing any more. I manage lawyers for a living. You know, I’m an organised and together person when, you know, I’m not being silly on Twitter,” Yiannopoulos said.
