U.S. immigration officials arrested controversial far-right British commentator Milo Yiannopoulos in New Orleans on Thursday, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration officials announced Friday that Yiannopoulos was arrested at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and charged with overstaying after legally entering the United States in May 2019 through New York City. An immigration judge issued a final deportation order on July 22 after Yiannopoulos failed to show up for his immigration hearing, a DHS spokesperson wrote in an email. “He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws,” a DHS spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. ICE’s online detainee locator does not say where Yiannopoulos is being held, but directs his family and legal representatives to the agency’s office in Alexandria, Louisiana, a deportation center for international flights. Representatives for Yiannopoulos did not respond to a request for comment. It is unclear if he has legal representation. The British national recently worked for rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who is scheduled to perform in New Orleans on Friday night. Yiannopoulos is a well-known advocate for conservative causes and has frequently taken provocative public positions criticizing feminism, Islam and immigrants. He has especially supported President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Get daily national news Get daily Canadian news delivered to your inbox so you never miss the day’s top stories. “Zero immigration for the next 20 years. No ifs ands or buts,” Yiannopoulos wrote on social platform X last year. Yiannopoulos rose to fame in the early 2010s as an incendiary writer for the conservative website Breitbart News. He resigned from the company in 2017 after a video of him endorsing pedophilia resurfaced online. He later apologized for the comments and said he himself was a victim of sexual assault as a minor. 1:54 Milo Yiannopoulos blames the media for a “politically motivated witch hunt” to harm him. Yiannopoulos’ arrest Friday comes amid a nationwide spike in detentions as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown. More on US news More videos Story continues below advertisement Far-right conservative activist Laura Loomer quickly took to social media to applaud Yiannopoulos’ arrest after years of public disputes between the two figures. “I was the first person to report on the fact that Milo was in the US illegally, where he incited violence against President Trump and worked for Marjorie Traitor Greene,” Loomer wrote in Fights broke out when some students protested Yiannopoulos’ appearances and accused him of inciting hate, while others celebrated him as a defender of free speech. Around that time, Buzzfeed reported on Yiannopoulos’ cozy relationships with self-proclaimed white nationalists. In recent years, Yiannopoulos continued to work in the orbit of conservative activism. In 2022, he interned for former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, according to the Washington Post. He later managed the brief 2024 presidential campaign for Ye. More recently, Yiannopolous has worked as a spokesperson for Ye, who has been dogged by his own controversy following anti-Semitic comments for which the rapper has since apologized. 1:28 Facebook removes Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos from its platform © 2026 The Canadian Press