It Only Took One Conservative Grifter Being Nabbed by ICE to Convince MAGA It Hates Deportation

It’s always fun to watch the deeply set, sincerely held values of right-wing America get instantly thrown to the four winds when something happens that forces them to reckon with the Trump administration’s many abuses. Still, we didn’t have “Milo Yiannopoulos detained by ICE” on our 2026 bingo cards, and it was a late Friday headline that will bring a lot of joy and consternation to different camps of the political activist spectrum. The longtime conservative grifter and agitator serves as both a prime example of how former Trump allies are thrown to the wolves by those still in favor once they stop being useful, and how many people and pundits who lustily cheer for the deportation of “every” illegal alien suddenly amend their opinion to “okay wait, I meant almost every” the second that one of their own is getting thrown into ICE detention.

Don’t think “illegals” in the U.S. are a big problem in general, though? Then you must not be Milo Yiannopoulos, who was tweeting in the summer of last year in favor of the deportation of more than 50 million people.

The only problem is of course the one you now see coming: Milo forgot the teensy, weensy detail that he has also apparently been an illegal immigrant in the U.S. for literally years, even as he attempted to score political points off immigrants. Those laws he was championing would surely never be used against him by a vindictive Trump administration! Yiannopoulos, a native of England, most recently “legally entered the country” in 2019 according to a statement tweeted by the Department of Homeland Security, and had subsequently “overstayed his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.” The government issued him a final order of removal in late July, and after Yiannopoulos could not be cajoled into showing up for an immigration hearing, he was apprehended by Trump’s Finest federal agents. DHS then did him the solid of choosing this photo as a mugshot. And they say the department is petty.

DHS just posted this mugshot of Milo Yiannopoulos

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 4:37 PM · Aug 28, 2026

Milo Yiannopoulos originally came to the U.S. from England in 2015 when he joined the staff of Breitbart News with a type of nonimmigrant visa that is supposed to be reserved for people with “extraordinary ability.” He rose quickly as a muckraker and supporter of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, becoming a CPAC speaker among other things. But he suddenly fell from the mainstream GOP spotlight after a video emerged of Yiannopoulos excusing sexual relations with minor boys and joking about pedophilia of Roman Catholic priests. Around the same time, he was banished from Twitter for orchestrating a widespread campaign of abuse and harassment against actress Leslie Jones in the build-up to the release of the female-fronted Ghostbusters movie. What a fondly recalled era of yore, right? He would stay in the fringes of MAGA personalities until about 2020, when he had a falling out with Trump ally Laura Loomer, who has subsequently spent the last few years campaigning to have him deported. Now it looks like she’s gotten her wish, and she gloated to The New York Times for being responsible: “I have been saying this should happen for a long time and now it did.”

For the Trump administration, such a use of ICE against a former ally serves a few purposes simultaneously. For one, it puts the fear of God in any foreign-born Trump ally that the brutal immigration system they’ve pushed can be turned against them if they fail to please Dear Leader, by publicly punishing Yiannopoulos. Secondly, it gives the most Trump-loyal conservative pundits a gift-wrapped example to talk about of the Trump administration “equally” applying immigration law because it arrested a single white man from the U.K. So what if the vast, vast majority of the other 70,000 people in detention happen to be browner of complexion? In reality, the number of ICE detainees with no criminal record is soaring as the agency expands its operations at airports, targeting foreign citizens in the midst of travel. We’re even arresting Legal Permanent Residents with green cards and simply telling them their documents are invalid, like Nazi caricatures.

As is so often the case when the Trump administration turns its petty sights on someone in the same ideological camp, though, the news of Yiannopoulos’ detention left many of the MAGA Twitter hordes particularly confused about how they were supposed to feel, with some of them suddenly questioning in the vein of wait, is the government applying its immigration policy in an arbitrary and punitive matter? Say it ain’t so! And so, I present some of my favorite consternated Twitter people replying to the DHS announcement that they had arrested Milo Yiannopoulos.

I like how this person clearly recognizes that Yiannopoulos is being punished for “turning on Trump” in some way, but then simultaneously only blames DHS and not Trump for carrying out the vengeance in his name.

A whole lot of the responses are in this vein, essentially implying (or just outright stating) that DHS and ICE clearly have no business arresting white people, because there are far too many brown people who still haven’t yet been arrested and deported.

A rare appearance from the anti-Israel, anti-Muslim, anti-Epstein, pro-Trump MAGA contingent? I can only imagine this is a very lonely community.

When ICE is used to arrest 5-year-old immigrant children, or the spouses of active duty U.S. military, that’s a serious-minded government upholding a promise to enforce its immigration laws, regardless of political alignment or favoritism. But when a conservative grifter gets thrown into the exact same detention center? That’s “performative weaponization.” Do you get how this works now?

And finally, my absolute favorite: The guy who seems to be sincerely confused how someone from England could possibly be considered an “illegal alien” at all, demonstrating that to a lot of MAGA America, a term like “illegal alien” is quite literally just a placeholder for “brown person.” Perhaps something good has come out of this whole Milo Yiannopoulos business, if it at least teaches a few of these right-wing idiots the meaning of a new term.