Far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos is distancing himself from his past support for President Donald Trump after American immigration agents deported him last week.
In an interview with British broadcaster Piers Morgan that aired Tuesday, Yiannopoulos said his experience being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement had fundamentally changed how he views Trump and the president’s mass-deportation agenda he once aggressively helped promote.
“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,” Yiannopoulos said.
Yiannopoulos was deported to the United Kingdom after being detained by ICE in Louisiana. The Department of Homeland Security said he had entered the United States legally in 2019 but overstayed his visa and failed to appear for an immigration hearing. An immigration judge issued a final order of removal in July, and Yiannopoulos told Morgan that the government had canceled his work permit “without telling me” some time in the last year.
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“To think that the promise and hope and joy and the anticipation of Trump 2016 could, sort of, over the course of 10 years, collapse into this ugly, warmongering, whole mentally ill heap of crazy — with some of the most unstable and lunatic people, seemingly directing the president’s actions,” Yiannopoulos said.
Yiannopoulos rose to prominence as a Breitbart editor and became one of the most recognizable provocateurs associated with the pro-Trump right during the president’s 2016 campaign. He later worked with Kanye West, and helped facilitate a 2022 dinner at Mar-a-Lago attended by Trump, West and far-right political commentator Nick Fuentes.
But Yiannopoulos now says he regrets his support for Trump, coming to that conclusion after experiencing the administration’s immigration enforcement firsthand. He described his recent ICE detention as “brutality” and said he was “swarmed” by 15 agents.
“For the first time, I know what it feels like to be really, really terrified,” he said. “The manner in which they arrest you, they put you in manacles — your hands, your feet — chained together. I mean, everybody who’s arrested is like an MS-13 gang member, and it hurts a lot more than it looks like.”
Yiannopoulos’ deportation also intensified a feud with staunch Trump ally Laura Loomer, who said that she repeatedly alerted federal officials about his immigration status.
The Trump administration rejected the idea that Yiannopoulos was targeted for political reasons. Trump border czar Tom Homan said the case was based on Yiannopoulos’ visa overstay, missed immigration hearing and final removal order.
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