The Department of Homeland Security deleted a deportation video featuring Theo Von on Wednesday after the comedian asked the agency to either pay or take it down.
The official DHS account posted the video on Tuesday X, which began with the comedian speaking to the camera.
“I heard you got deported, dude,” Von says in the clip, as he shakes his head in disappointment. It ends with him saying “trusted” because it cuts to a montage of federal agents detaining people as it lists the statistics. The video claims that 2 million people have been deported in 250 days, which it breaks down into 1.6 million self-deportations and 400,000 government deportations.
Von reposted the video and responded to DHS, demanding they send him a check for using his fame. He said he was not okay with the agency using the footage.
“And please take it off and please keep me out of your ‘Banger’ deportation videos. When it comes to immigration, my thoughts and heart are much more nuanced than this video allows. Bye!” he said.
Late Wednesday morning, DHS took down the video. Vaughn also deleted his claims. Vaughn and DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Times on Wednesday.
Vaughn hosts a weekly podcast called “Last Weekend,” where he discusses a variety of topics and interviews guests and callers. In June, during an episode of Immigration Raids in LA, a caller asked him for his thoughts on the situation.
In his response, the host claimed that some of the videos circulating from the raids were not real and were staged for content purposes. He called the immigration system “broken” and said that “there has to be a way to create a path to citizenship for productive people.”
“It’s sick when you see children crying and people being taken from their parents,” Vaughn said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Since the Trump administration took office, DHS has been releasing meme-style videos on X that show federal agents detaining people. The latest video plays the theme song from the anime series “Pokemon” — “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” the chorus says — over clips of agents detaining people. In other news, the account shows images of detainees turned into Pokemon cards.
