Milo YiannopoulosMother Jones; EMPPL PA/AP
Before last week, Milo Yiannopoulos was one of the most noxious, divisive, and broadly unpopular far-right figures in the country, having whittled down his allies in the movement over the past decade with a combination of exuberant misogyny and bigotry, catty infighting, an infamous moment of pedophilia apologism, and increasingly pointed criticism of Donald Trump. Now, he’ll have to settle for being a broadly divisive and unpopular figure in the UK, having been swiftly and very publicly deported back to his home country on Friday after being arrested at the New Orleans airport.
But while Yiannopoulos’ deportation contains an extremely rich vein of schadenfreude—he previously called for deporting “millions and millions of people” and joked about masturbating while witnessing ICE raids—it’s also indicative of how power, punishment, and influence currently work in the MAGA movement, and broader crackup within that feud-heavy world, where fragile alliances are constantly being made, broken and remade anew. Three far-right figures—Trump confidante Laura Loomer, former Breitbart UK editor Raheem Kassem, and MAGA propagandist Benny Johnson—have either taken credit for or claimed advance knowledge of Yiannopoulos’ deportation. All have indicated they’re in communication with inside sources at the Department of Homeland Security, who shared what would normally be confidential information about a supposed hunt for Milo, who had allegedly overstayed his visa, in order to remove him. And both Loomer and Kassem implied that more of their enemies could face imprisonment and deportation very soon.
Yiannopoulos is, to be overly clear, no one’s idea of a sympathetic victim and someone whose favor even with his ideological fellow travelers has been steadily waning for years. A Breitbart columnist from 2014 to 2017 and an enthusiastic early backer of Trump, he mostly made his name in the mid-2000s as a gleefully offensive all-purpose troll and rank Islamophobe who was barred from Australia in 2019 for branding the religion “barbaric” in the wake of the Christchurch, New Zealand terrorist attacks. He was also an enthusiastic backer of Gamergate, a supposed crusade for ethics in video game journalism that began in 2014 and became, instantly, a cover for doxxing and harassing women in the gaming world and beyond. Gamergate created the circumstances for Yiannopoulos’ burgeoning fame in the United States, as did his plans to hold “free speech” rallies at University of California-Berkeley and elsewhere, which fizzled out quickly, with organizers citing safety concerns.
Yiannopoulos’ star plummeted in 2017, when comments he made appearing to defend sex with 13-year-olds were resurfaced by a conservative Twitter account; Yiannopoulos called some sex between teens and adults “perfectly consensual” and called some teen-adult sexual interactions “coming-of-age relationships.” (He went on to apologize for the comments, blame the way they were received on “deceptive editing,” and say he was himself a victim of sexual abuse as a minor.) The comments ignited a true furor in the conservative world, and in short order, he had a speaking gig canceled at CPAC, a book deal nixed, and ultimately resigned from Breitbart. In an interview in 2021 with the anti-abortion Life Site News, Yiannopoulos declared that he was no longer gay and that he was “living as brothers” with the man who’d once been his husband. He also had a brief stint on the YouTube channel of Catholic outlet Church Militant hawking religious statues and became part of a far-right push to “reform” the Catholic church.
By 2020, Yiannopoulos had become intermittently critical of Trump, who he’d once adored. At the same time, he began allying himself with various members of the far-right fringe. In 2022, he began working as an “intern” for Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and was involved in rap artist Ye’s abortive presidential campaign. (Yiannopoulos has continued to work for Ye, though he did claim in 2024 to have resigned; that was apparently short-lived, and he soon returned to work for Yeezy, the artist’s company, as a spokesperson.) During that time, he also helped arrange what became an actual scandal for Trump: a private dinner with Ye and white nationalist incel Nick Fuentes.
“I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with,” Yiannopoulos told NBC News a few days later.
All of this, then, created a situation where Yiannopoulos had few true allies in the MAGA movement. He was especially at odds with Laura Loomer, who immediately took credit for his deportation. “When Milo called for me to be assassinated, I reported him to ICE and the FBI,” she tweeted on Friday. “I told you all that Milo was an illegal alien.”
(In its own tweet, the Department of Homeland Security alleged that Yiannopoulos had entered the country legally in 2019 on a tourist visa, which he overstayed, and also said that a final order of removal was issued for him after he missed an immigration hearing in July. DHS concluded their statement by encouraging people to “self-deport,” advice which has had deadly consequences for some migrants returning to their home countries.)
Raheem Kassam, a former Breitbart UK editor and former advisor to far-right UK politician Nigel Farage who now owns a MAGA hotspot restaurant in DC, also said that he’d been aware that immigration authorities were looking for Yiannopoulos. Kassam claimed on X and in a Substack post that Milo had once “begged me for a job,” blaming himself for Yiannopoulos’ rise. Kassam didn’t go so far as to take credit for Milo’s deportation, but he wrote that, “A friend close to the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) reached out and let me know: ‘Milo has been living in the US illegally.’”
“I was shocked,” Kassam added, “though I suppose I ought not to have been. A source close to the State Department confirmed it when I enquired, and so began his deportation saga.”
Kassam added that he “got word last month that [Milo] was about to be deported. On Thursday night, I got a call. As overly dramatic as it may seem. ‘We got him. In Louisiana.’”
Another Yiannopulos foe, Benny Johnson, also claimed to have inside knowledge of the proceedings against him. Several hours after Loomer posted that Yiannopoulos had been arrested, Johnson quote-tweeted it and wrote, “Milo has already been deported. The flight has taken off. Milo will never be legally allowed back in America again.” In other words, then, like Loomer, Johnson’s post gave the impression that he had inside knowledge of DHS proceedings, despite not being, at least officially, employed with the government in any capacity.
Like Loomer and Kassam, Johnson also claimed to have been aware that Yiannopoulos was in the country illegally for quite a while. He appeared to threaten last year to sue Yiannopoulos and claimed in tweets on Friday that he had not done so because, he wrote, “Laura called and told me he was an illegal alien and it will be impossible to sue him or serve him because he’s running from ICE like a rat.” (Besides his MAGA enemies, TMZ reported on Monday that Yiannopoulos also accused his ex-husband of threatening to call ICE on him in court filings in 2025, writing that his ex, in TMZ’s words, “knew his green card status depended on their continued marriage.”)
Loomer, Kassam, and Johnson are all in good standing with the MAGA power structure; for their loyalty, they were rewarded with, at the very least, a special degree of information about DHS proceedings and an early opportunity to humiliate a sworn enemy. This is a situation they all seem to relish. Loomer has been on a celebratory tweeting spree for days and has since called for Marjorie Taylor Greene to be investigated for employing Yiannopoulos, as well as another of her far-right foes, podcaster Candace Owens, seemingly for interviewing Yiannopoulos, which Loomer called “harboring an illegal alien in her home.” Kassam, meanwhile, responded to a well-wisher congratulating him on Yiannopulos’ downfall by writing, “Wait til you see who’s next.”
Even Yiannopoulos was, in a twisted way, shown a level of favoritism that most undocumented immigrants don’t receive. Instead of languishing in detention for months or years, or being deported to a “legal black hole” in a country like Eswatini, he was sent to the UK almost immediately. Kassam speculated in his Substack post that Yiannopoulos would soon resurface in UK politics “or perhaps as a contestant on some third-tier reality show.”
“To America, I say my apologies. For all of it,” he added. “And to Britain, in advance of his return… my apologies. For all of it.”
