Khaby Lame, the world’s most popular TikTok creator, was detained on June 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed to Men’s Journal after the outlet reached out to confirm that ICE had detained the Sengalese-Italian content creator on suspicion that he had committed immigration violations but later allowed him to leave the United States.
According to Men’s Journal, Lame, however, has not addressed his time in ICE custody, at least, not on TikTok or Instagram. Per their reporting, suspicion arose after a right-wing influencer, Bo Louden, posted on X that he had reported Lame to ICE, but Lame wasn’t located in the ICE detention database.
BREAKING: Far-left ILLEGAL ALIEN TikToker Khaby Lame was just ARRESTED and is now in ICE custody under President Trump.
I discovered he was an illegal who overstayed an invalid VISA, evaded taxes, and I personally took action to have him deported.
No one is above the law! pic.twitter.com/cpcxfQFRIm
— Bo Loudon (@BoLoudon) June 6, 2025
ICE emailed the outlet, confirming their detention of Lame, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Seringe Khabane Lame, 25, a citizen of Italy, June 6, at the Harry Reid International Airport, Las Vegas, Nevada for immigration violations.”
ICE continued, “Lame entered the United States April 30 and overstayed the terms of his visa. Lame was granted voluntary departure June 6 and has since departed the U.S.”
Men’s Journal noted in their original reporting that the screenshot that originally spread across X prompted Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot native to the social networking site that he owns, to warn users that it was likely fake.
In their own efforts to replicate the screenshot using both the name that was allegedly Lame’s government name and the listed A-Number from the screenshot, they were unable to achieve the same results, which raised additional suspicion concerning the report from Louden.
According to KRON4, although Lame, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, was born in Senegal, his Italian citizenship was granted when he turned 20. Furthermore, according to the Henley Passport Index, Italy is tied for the fourth strongest passport in the world, entitling Italian citizens with passports visa free or visa on arrival travel to 191 countries.
Contrary to Louden’s claims, Lame, as an Italian citizen, is not required to have a visa to be in the United States for up to 90 days, and in May, Lame was one of many stars to celebrate the evolution of Black Dandyism at this year’s Met Gala.
According to Al-Jazeera, after Trump called for a quota of 3,000 immigration arrests, immigration advocates like Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy group, sounded the alarm regarding what that means for those caught in the administration’s crosshairs.
“The quotas that they are pushing for [are] creating this situation on the ground where ICE is literally just trying to go after anybody that they can catch. In the dragnet, we’re getting long-established, deeply rooted Dreamers and other folks that have been in the United States for a long time,” Cardenas explained to the outlet.
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