TikTok superstar Khaby Lame was detained by ICE before being allowed to leave the U.S.
Khaby Lame, famous for his silently hilarious TikTok persona, was detained by immigration officers last week, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Lame, 25, rose to fame while living in Italy, becoming the most-followed personality on TikTok by creating comedy skits and skewering ludicrous “life hacks” promulgated online. He currently has 162.2 million followers on the platform.
Lame attended last month’s Met Gala in New York City, during a visit to the U.S. Officials say he overstayed his visa — but was allowed to leave the country after initially being detained in Nevada.
“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,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement to NPR.
Requests for comment from Lame and his management company were not immediately returned. His TikTok and Instagram accounts have not mentioned his being detained.
ICE says the content creator legally entered the U.S. on April 30 but remained in the country beyond the date his visa allowed.
When asked for details about the visa — such as its duration — NPR was told: “The information provided in the statement is all we have available.”
“Lame was granted voluntary departure June 6 and has since departed the U.S.,” the ICE spokesperson said.
Such departures are discretionary, according to ICE’s guidelines, and do not entail “a removal order and related immigration consequences.”
Lame was born in Senegal and raised in Italy — of which he became a citizen in summer of 2022.
At the time, Lame was being been touted as the “king of TikTok,” after becoming the most popular account with more than 140 million followers. But he told Italian media that he hadn’t yet been able to become a citizen in the country where he had lived since he was 1. Soon afterward, a government official announced Lame would receive Italian citizenship.
@khaby.lame Many of you have been asking me to share something about Mr. Bean, so here it is finally, a video just for you! I hope it brings a smile to your face. Let me know if you’d like to see more content like this!#learnfromkhaby #comedy #mrbean ♬ original sound – Khabane lame
Lame’s rise to fame started in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, when he began to post videos to TikTok, according to an interview with La Repubblica. He quickly became a sensation, his quiet but dramatic online persona drawing comparisons to the comedian Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean character.
Last fall, Lame even created a skit that blended footage of Mr. Bean — in an airport — with video of Lame portraying a security officer.
Discussing Lame’s broad appeal, Payal Arora, a digital anthropologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, told NPR last December that — along with being funny — Lame likes to put social media influencers in their place.
When Lame produces videos highlighting the absurdity of influencers’ life tips, Arora says, his message to regular people is, “Hey, hang on. They are the idiots, not you. You’re doing the normal thing.”
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