CORRECTION -- STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Was TikTok influencer Khaby Lame arrested by ICE and was he "deported"? No, that's not true: A video on X making that claim showed a 220963977 A-number from ICE's detainee locator system that currently does not show any results. An ICE spokesperson said Lame was briefly "detained" on June 6, 2025 at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada after he overstayed the terms of his visa but was granted "voluntary departure" on the same day, which does not carry the same consequences a deportation order does.
The claim appeared in a viral post on X (archived here) published on June 7, 2025 that read:
🔥🚨BREAKING: Legendary liberal TikTok influencer Khaby Lame just got arrested and is now in ICE custody after Bo London reported the influencer.
Bo London: "I discovered he was an illegal who overstayed an invalid VISA, evaded taxes, and I personally took action to have him deported."
The "Bo London" mentioned in the tweet appears to be a typo. The message in question (archived here) appears to be from "Bo Loudon" on X.
It was accompanied by a video that appeared to show a detention record for Lame on ICE's website superimposed over a video of the influencer looking into the camera:
However the A-Number shown in the screenshot appears to be falsified or out of date. When Lead Stories searched it using ICE's Online Detainee Locator System, no results came up:
(Image: screen recording of https://locator.ice.gov/odls/#/search)
Searching the system for Lame, using first name "Khabane" or "Seringe" with birth date (March 9, 2000) and place of birth (Senegal) also did not bring up any records for Mr. Lame, who is an Italian citizen.
An ICE spokesperson told Lead Stories by email:
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. 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.
Legally, arrest and detention are two different concepts, with a detention generally being brief and involving temporary questioning while an arrest involves formal charges. Voluntary departure is also not the same as deportation. According to a Justice Department Self-Help guide on Voluntary Departure (archived here), "voluntary departure" is defined as:
Voluntary Departure allows you to leave the U.S. at your own expense within a specific amount of time in order to avoid a deportation order.
It also mentions that voluntary departure generally allows people to return to the U.S. much sooner than a deportation order would:
Benefits of Voluntary Departure
- There is no order of deportation in your immigration record. A deportation order may prevent you from coming to the U.S. for up to ten years or make you ineligible for certain immigration benefits. If you take Voluntary Departure, you may be able to return to the U.S. much sooner.
- There are more ways for you to lawfully return to the U.S. if you take Voluntary Departure. If you take Voluntary Departure, you may be able to apply for a visa to return to the U.S. from your home country, or family members in the U.S. may be able to ask the government to allow you to enter the country legally. Some of these opportunities are not available if you have a deportation order in your immigration record.
According to the guide, voluntary departure requires proving one is a "good person" and it further says people "convicted of an aggravated felony" do not qualify for it.
The background of the video seems to be a video (archived here) Lame pinned to the top of his Instagram account in which he observes one minute of silence for war victims:
The account that ran the video with the old image is run by Dominic Mc Gee, an conservative influencer recently profiled by The New York Times (archived here), who described him as:
Mr. McGee is a longtime Trump supporter who thrives on X because he is a master of outrage: He uses viral videos to incite furious debate, posts misleading political attacks against prominent Democrats to rile up MAGA devotees and curries favor with the online right by trading in the kinds of antisemitism that has infused some online communities. Though he was barred from the platform in 2023 and kicked from its revenue program in 2024 over some of his posts, neither punishment lasted very long and he quickly bounced back.
Lead Stories reached out to Khaby Lame's team by email and will update this story if a reply is received.
Updates:
-
2025-06-07T16:59:47Z 2025-06-07T16:59:47Z Added information about "Voluntary departure" vs. "deportation" -
2025-06-07T15:34:31Z 2025-06-07T15:34:31Z Added statement from ICE saying Lame was granted voluntary departure. An earlier version of this story called the image falsified but it appears to be out of date.
