‘Really terrified’: Milo Yiannopoulos speaks out after deportation from US

Far-right British commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, who once embraced United States President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, has made his first public remarks after his US arrest and deportation.

In an interview released on Tuesday, Yiannopoulos spoke to host Piers Morgan about his experience, telling the interviewer that he now knows what it’s like to be “really, really terrified”.

“I didn’t really understand the physical reality of how institutionalised the brutality is in America,” Yiannopoulos said.

As he described having his hands and feet chained together while in custody, he criticised immigration authorities for treating ordinary detainees like criminals.

“Everybody arrested is like an MS-13 gang member, and it hurts a lot more than it looks like on television,” he said of the manacles he was forced to wear.

Yiannopoulos was arrested by US federal agents after arriving at the airport in New Orleans, Louisiana, last Thursday. The 41-year-old conservative firebrand was subsequently sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in a process he called “humiliating” and “disorienting”.

“It was frightening, and I don’t think I’ve ever been frightened like that before,” Yiannopoulos said.

Yiannopoulos allegedly entered the US legally on May 14, 2019.