Milo Yiannopoulos Detained by ICE in New Orleans Pending Deportation

The takes

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  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  When the Cheerleader for Deportation Meets the Deportation Officer

  The detention of a loud champion of harsh immigration enforcement is not tyranny but the ordinary operation of the rules he applauded for others, and it is those rules—not his opinions—that the impartial spectator must judge.

  A government office, not a battlefield, supplied the present drama. Immigration officials in the United States have arrested a British commentator in New Orleans. The Department of Homeland Security reports that he entered the country legally some years ago, overstayed, was summoned to an immigration hearing, failed to appear, and was therefore issued a final order of removal on 22 July. He is now held in custody, in Louisiana, pending deportation. No novel despotism is here unveiled; this is the unfashionable routine of law—summons, absence, judgment, execution—that usually proceeds without cameras, hashtags, or outraged pamphleteers.

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  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  On Deportation and the Trust of Power

  When a state confines and expels a man, the question is not whether we like him, but whether the power that seizes his person is law, or mere will under the name of law.

  The stories about Milo Yiannopoulos are written with relish for his opinions, his provocations, his former employments and allies. All this may amuse or disgust, but it does not yet touch the point that should most concern any people jealous of their liberty: by what right is a man arrested in an airport, confined in a detention center, and readied for removal from the territory where he lives and works. I am told that an officer of your Department of Homeland Security reports a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge, after the man failed to appear for his hearing, and that he is held pending deportation. That is the bare frame; the question is, is it government or usurpation.

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  Niccolò Machiavelli

  1469–1527, Florence (republican secretary and diplomat, then exile, amid the Italian Wars)

  When the Troll Meets the State

  A provocateur can live by outrage for years, but the first missed hearing reminds him that only one side in politics can actually put a man in a cage and put him on a plane.

  A man who makes his name by taunting power must, at some point, test whether power finds this amusing. Here we have a British commentator, long trading in incendiary speech and spectacle, now arrested by immigration officials in New Orleans. He once cheers raids by this same agency, now he sits in its detention center. The effectual truth is simple: for years he enjoyed the profits of notoriety while residing in the United States; now, having overstayed and missed his hearing, he faces a final order of removal and custody pending deportation. A life built on trolling meets the one institution that does not need to answer in the comments.

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