The White House “border czar,” Tom Homan, denied on Sunday that the British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was deported just a day after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for political reasons.
Homan said it was his understanding that Yiannopoulos, ۴۱, had overstayed what he believed to be a visitor visa, had not appeared at an immigration hearing and was issued a final order of removal on ۲۲ July.
“He didn’t show up,” Homan told CNN’s State of the Union. “The judge ordered him deported. So, once ICE gets an order of deportation from a federal judge, their job is to execute that order, and that’s what they did.”
He added: “He had his due process, ordered removed by a federal judge, and ICE removed him. It’s that simple.”
Yiannopoulos’s removal one day after his arrest, when many others who have been deported had first endured lengthy detention center incarcerations, has prompted questions about whether he received preferential treatment in that respect. Homan said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, was trying to speed up the deportation process.
“Once a judge orders them out, rather than being in detention, waiting for travel documents and flight arrangements, we – ICE, along with the [border patrol] and [DHS] – [are] working really good on the efficiencies of the removal process,” Homan remarked.
He continued: “As soon as we get an order removal, our goal is remove them as quick as possible, regardless of who they are. Get them out quick. Open those beds up for more detainees.”
DHS had quickly publicized Yiannopoulos’s arrest on Thursday at an airport in New Orleans – where he may have travelled to attend a concert by rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, on Friday at the city’s Caesars Superdome.
Officials with DHS touted Yiannopoulos’s arrest on Friday. By Saturday morning, Yiannopoulos’s name was removed from a list of people in ICE detention, and DHS confirmed that he had been deported to the UK on Friday – one day after his arrest.
“He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws,” a DHS release said, adding “The administration is working diligently to ensure that aliens in our country illegally can no longer fly unless it is out of our country to self-deport”.
CNN host Dana Bash asked Homan if the rightwing influencer Laura Loomer had, as she claimed, tipped off ICE that Yiannopoulos’s permission to be in the US had expired.
“A lot of people tipped ICE off,” Homan replied. “There are a lot of people who’s calling ICE, and she says she’s one of them. She probably was.
“But bottom line is, it doesn’t matter. He was ordered removed by an immigration judge, and ICE’s job it to execute that order.”
Loomer and Yiannopoulos – who had sanguinely cheered the Trump administration’s deportation efforts before his expulsion from the US – had publicly fallen out.
Homan, meanwhile, denied that the Trump administration had made an example of Yiannopoulos to send a message. “We don’t deport people based on political affiliation,” he said.
