British far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos has been deported back to the United Kingdom after his arrest by American immigration authorities, U.S. officials said Saturday.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Yiannopoulos was returned to his home country on Friday after being accused of overstaying after entering the U.S. legally in May 2019. A immigration judge had issued a final order of removal on July 22 after he failed to show up for an immigration hearing, a Homeland Security spokesperson said.
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FILE - Media personality and author Milo Yiannopoulos appears during an interview in New York on July 18, 2017, to promote his autobiography, "Dangerous." (AP Photo/John Carucci, File)
FILE - Milo Yiannopoulos pauses while speaking during a news conference in New York, Feb. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
FILE - Milo Yiannopoulos speaks during a news conference in New York, Feb. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
FILE - Activist Milo Yiannopoulos speaks during a rally outside of the Baltimore hotel where the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops are holding its Fall General Assembly meeting in Baltimore, Nov. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
Yiannopoulos was arrested Thursday at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Louisiana and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement.
Yiannopoulos and his representatives did not respond to requests for comment. He has not posted on his X social media account since Thursday.
Yiannopoulos is a well-known champion of conservative causes and has frequently taken provocative public positions criticizing feminism, Islam and immigrants. He has been especially supportive of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
“Zero immigration for the next 20 years. No ifs, no buts,” Yiannopoulos wrote on X last year.
The British national has most recently worked for the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who performed in New Orleans on Friday evening.
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 remarks and said he himself was a victim of sexual assault as a minor.
Yiannopoulos’ arrest on Thursday comes amid a nationwide uptick in detentions as part of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Far-right conservative activist Laura Loomer swiftly took to social media to applaud Yiannopoulos’ arrest after years of public feuding between the two personalities.
“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 on X.
Controversy around Yiannopoulos ballooned in 2017 when he carried out what he called his “Troll Academy Tour” across college campuses nationwide. Fights broke out when some students protested Yiannopoulos’ appearances and accused him of hate speech, while others celebrated him as a champion 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 was an intern for former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, according to the Washington Post. He subsequently ran the short-lived 2024 presidential campaign for Ye.
Most recently, Yiannopoulos has worked as a spokesperson for Ye, who has been beset by controversy of his own following antisemitic comments that the rapper has since apologized for.
FILE - Media personality and author Milo Yiannopoulos appears during an interview in New York on July 18, 2017, to promote his autobiography, "Dangerous." (AP Photo/John Carucci, File)
FILE - Milo Yiannopoulos pauses while speaking during a news conference in New York, Feb. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
FILE - Milo Yiannopoulos speaks during a news conference in New York, Feb. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
FILE - Activist Milo Yiannopoulos speaks during a rally outside of the Baltimore hotel where the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops are holding its Fall General Assembly meeting in Baltimore, Nov. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
MYLA, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone struck a warehouse west of Kyiv that Ukrainian officials say may have been illegally storing munitions, sparking explosions and fires that damaged dozens of nearby homes and buildings and killing 37 people in the war's deadliest attack this year.
The Friday night attack on the warehouse in Myla, a village in the Bucha district, came on the second of three days of nearly round-the-clock Russian strikes that have severely disrupted life in and around the Ukrainian capital. Kyiv officials said an unmanned vehicle hit the building, though they didn't specify whether it was one of the jet-powered drones that Russia has increasingly been using to pierce Ukraine's defenses.
The warehouse strike sparked a fire that swept through homes and damaged at least 50 residential buildings, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of the local regional military administration. Local media later cited him as saying 34 of the people killed were residents of a care home for the elderly and disabled. More than 370 people were evacuated.
“At about 8 p.m., the drone hit a warehouse somewhere and then the detonation began," Oleksandr Vodolaz, a local resident, told The Associated Press. “No one knew that weapons were stored there."
The 37 killed surpassed the 31 who died in a July 2 strike on Kyiv, which had been the war's deadliest attack of 2026.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described it as a “terrible situation” and said it appeared to be the result of “terrible negligence on the part of those who stored explosives right next to people.”
The warehouse strike was followed by a detonation, Zelenskyy said in a statement. He didn't specify what was kept at the site, but he pointed out that Ukrainian law forbids the storage of ammunition close to people's homes and said criminal proceedings have been opened.
“Those who allowed this to happen must be held accountable for their decisions,” he said.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi also didn't offer information on the warehouse, but he referenced a July attack on the Kyiv suburb of Vyshneve that struck an ammunition depot, killing 22 people and triggering large detonations and fires that tore through nearby homes.
“Unfortunately, we can already see that the terrible tragedy in Vyshneve did not become a lesson,” Koretskyi said. “In the fifth year of a full-scale invasion, making the same mistakes is criminal negligence. And all those guilty, without exception, must be severely punished so that such situations do not happen again.”
Russia's Defense Ministry said it hit a warehouse in Myla that was storing components and launch boosters for long-range drones. It also said it attacked the ports of Mykolaiv and Izmail, and a logistics center and warehouse facilities storing parts for Ukraine's Flamingo cruise missiles in the Kyiv region.
Drone attacks on the capital and, to a lesser extent, the rest of Ukraine have been nearly constant since Thursday. Kyiv officials say Russia builds up missile stocks and launches major attacks every few days, hoping to exhaust Ukrainian defenses through the sheer weight of numbers.
Russian strikes damaged homes and apartment blocks in the southern Kherson region on Saturday, killing two people and wounding 27 more, including a child, Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the region administration, said in a statement.
Prokudin said earlier in the week that Russia had intensified its attacks on critical infrastructure in the region, which is about 70% under Russian control. He also urged tens of thousands of residents to move to safer regions because of the possibility of prolonged power and heating outages this winter.
Russia has significantly increased its use of jet-powered drones, and their numbers will keep growing as Moscow sees their effectiveness, Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, told reporters Friday.
“Means of attack always outpace means of defense. We will certainly need to adapt. It will take time,” Palisa said. He said interceptor drones currently available to Ukraine, which could theoretically intercept jet-powered drones, have not yet demonstrated the expected effectiveness, though Ukraine is working on solutions.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has stepped up its long-range attacks on Russian military industries and energy facilities in recent months. The attacks, which use domestically made drones, are meant to cut into a source of Moscow’s war funding and make Russians feel the consequences.
In his evening statement to the nation Friday, Zelenskyy said Kyiv hoped to increase its long-range strikes to reach 1000 drone launches every day.
“Right now, we average over 300 of our long-range sanctions,” Zelenskyy said, his preferred term for Kyiv’s long-range attacks that have also lately targeted Russian large-scale online retailers. “There must be more. We have a very specific goal, and we will achieve it.”
Moscow’s forces destroyed 313 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday.
Ukrainian drone attacks wounded 11 people in Russia’s Rostov region, Gov. Yuri Slyusar said. Writing on social media, he said that nine people were hospitalized, including four children.
This story was updated to correct that 31 people, not 30, were killed in the July 2 attack on Kyiv.
Davies reported from Manchester, England, and Yurchuk from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Police officers inspect the area, after a Russian attack struck a warehouse, followed by an explosion, in the village of Myla, Kyiv region, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
A view of the damage after a Russian attack struck a warehouse, followed by an explosion, in the village of Myla, Kyiv region, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
A view of a destroyed car amid damaged buildings, with a road sign showing the direction and distance to Kyiv and Zhytomyr after a Russian attack struck a warehouse, followed by an explosion, in the village of Myla, Kyiv region, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out a fire in a warehouse following a Russian drone attack near Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Emergency Service, firefighters put out a fire in a warehouse following a Russian drone attack near Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (Ukrainian Emergency Service via AP)
