Thursday night, New Orleans. I have flown in from Los Angeles for work and am walking off the jet bridge, thinking about dinner, when 15 men in vests coalesce around me. I have never been arrested before. Even they find it strange, because I am British, and I am in Balenciaga, and I am ever so nice about it all.

They take my belt, wallet, every piece of identification, my rosary and Missal, cash. They put me in chains. Real chains. Every man they arrest, whatever he has done, ends up garlanded in steel like this: wincing, hopping, clattering. It hurts more than they make out on TV.

Yes. I am being deported.

Somewhere in Miami, at hearings nobody told me about, a judge has ordered me removed. My work permit has been canceled without a word. The notices were sent to a Florida address I left ten years ago, which, I realize, must have been on purpose. The same agencies have been writing regularly and without incident to my new address for years.

Three of the five warning letters were even returned, marked “addressee unknown.” The arresting agents told me so. When I said I could not find my lawyer’s number, an agent read it to me off his computer screen. But somehow my lawyer had never been informed about any of the past year’s developments. I am stripped, starved, shipped between three detention centers in 12 hours.

A few of the agents knew my face from 2016, when I was Donald Trump’s biggest fan. Back then, I called him Daddy. “Yeah, I’m not doing this,” said one officer. “This is not what I got into this for,” muttered another. I’m certain I saw at least one walk off the job while I was being booked.

The last pair, who drove me to Houston for the flight, said they were getting “calls from Washington” every 20 minutes. They agreed that none of this was normal. “You must have pissed someone off.” My photo is already on the ICE Twitter account, though I won’t know it for another 18 hours.

I spent years demanding this agency be let off the leash. And so it is. Yet, I am torn about the fact that I am the only person arrested by ICE in August who has not killed or raped anyone. I might be the only person arrested by them at all: In each new jail, I am the only prisoner. Long corridors of empty cells. Gleaming 2026 SUVs in the parking lot. Agents on steroids in virgin tactical gear. They’ve spent the money. But I don’t think they’ve done much deporting.

Well-connected friends confirm a few days later that this theatrically cruel performance is my punishment for turning on Trump. On air with Candace Owens, I’d accused him of betrayal, cowardice, and capitulation to warmongering Israeli psychopaths.

Like it or not, this makes me a political prisoner, a persecuted human rights icon. I am Mahatma Gandhi. I am Nelson Mandela. I’m not exactly sure who Aung San Suu Kyi is, and can’t be bothered to look it up, but, yes, I am him too.

They keep moving me to keep ahead of my lawyers, who, when they call, are given the name of wherever we just left. I am handed a note and told it’s where I am being taken next; this is a lie. I am promised a phone call, a nurse, medication, a chance to be heard by a judge. All lies. Twenty-four hours without food. Longer without sleep.

No sign of my lawyer. But – of course! – there is a photographer. He, at least, has been given truthful directions. I mean to stare into his lens with defiance and stoicism, but I am fat and covered in filth and stains and drool and I am crying and even border czar Tom Homan can’t bring himself to tweet this one. But he does go on on television to say I have “had my due process.”

As ever, my critics fail to meet the moment. Laura Loomer, who is not a Congresswoman thanks to me, took credit for my bruises, proclaiming “a great day for America.” I will not be cruel about her; I do not think she is well. Ben Shapiro, citing the wrong visa class – because he is stupid – wondered how I ever got into the States, since it has “plenty of nut jobs” already. Ben has written five New York Times bestsellers. I have ghostwritten 17. Let us not punch down.

Nonetheless, I stand exposed as a hypocrite who got what he asked for. I wanted millions indiscriminately deported, and said so – loudly, and in worse words. You have me.

Monday, London. For years I told people I’d never come back to the UK “because I don’t speak Arabic.” It is time to learn. I have been back at work for two days. I manage lawyers, which can be done from anywhere with good enough wifi and bad enough grievances. So things are mostly OK.

But then, last night, I trip on the stairs – nothing in itself, I am clumsy. But something in me, as I fall, remembers being shoved down steps. I reach for the graze on my forehead, and weep for an hour like an old woman.

Without my rosary, I prayed on the plane with open hands instead. That still works. So do motions to reopen. I’ll be fine. I had a frightening weekend; this will be an expensive few months. I will make it home eventually. I miss my Bengals more than any American person. There, see, still a git. But not so cruel as America, still wedded, at age 250, to brazen corruption and barbarism.

Milo Yiannopoulos, The Spectator