A controversial right-wing Australian activist has taken aim at Billie Eilish and accused her of ‘getting him deported from the US’.
Earlier this month the American singer condemned the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, widely known as ICE, while accepting a Grammy award.
Over the past few months, the actions of the federal government agency have come under the spotlight for ongoing immigration raids, as well as the killing of civilians Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Speaking on stage during the music awards ceremony, in which stars including Bad Bunny also slammed ICE, Billie declared: ‘As grateful as I feel, I honestly don’t feel like I need to say anything but that no one is illegal on stolen land.’
The singer then expressed her frustrations at the growing anti-immigration rhetoric in her home country, which was colonised by Europeans in the late 16th century.
‘It’s just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now, and I just feel really hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter.’ Concluding her speech, she added: ‘And f*** ICE, that’s all I’m gonna say. Sorry!’
Although Billie was widely celebrated for her speech, others took aim and highlighted that her $3,000,000 (£2,100,000) Los Angeles home is also on ‘stolen land’ – in an area that belongs to the Tongva tribe.
A few weeks on, a self-proclaimed activist has said he was deported from the US after travelling to the country to ‘occupy’ the singer’s mansion.
Drew Pavlou, 26, recently announced his plans to squat in the singer’s multi-million-dollar home.
However, on his way to carry out the project – which he dubbed ‘performance art’ – he was stopped by border force officials and was detained for over 24 hours before eventually being sent home as he’d not arrived on a business visa.
Sharing updates on his mission on social media, Pavlou initially said on the day of Billie’s speech that she was sharing an ‘an extremely radical viewpoint’. ‘She’s essentially arguing that the United States of America should be abolished – that it is an illegitimate nation due to the sins of colonisation,’ he wrote on Instagram.
Soon after he announced he’d decided to ‘move into’ the singer’s beachfront mansion in Malibu, sarcastically adding: ‘Thank you Billie for your generosity.’
Pavlou then made it clear he was completely serious, initially setting up a GoFundMe to help pay for his flights from Australia, but it was then taken down for breaching guidelines.
Speaking in an interview on Sky News, Pavlou said he was ‘not planning on doing anything illegal’ but would ‘just sit outside her house until somebody asks me to leave’.
‘I think it would be important to test this theory that nobody is illegal on stolen land,’ he added.
He went on to say that before it was taken down, his first fundraising page raised over $3,000 (£1,500) in less than three hours, which was enough to pay for his flights.
Calling himself ‘persecuted’, Pavlou also joked about the potential that Billie and her team ‘could try and take out a restraining order against me’.
‘She should be opening her doors to the entire world like she said, which I think is very fair,’ he continued.
However, when it came time to carry out his plans, Pavlou shared an update with his 65,000 followers, saying he’d been deported when trying to enter the United States – blaming the singer herself.
‘I spent 30 hours at LAX immigration trying to explain that my s*** posts were just a joke and that I didn’t actually plan to personally move into her mansion,’ he said.
‘Honestly most of the agents were nice and laughed at the idea but there was nothing I could do, maybe evil leftists are still in charge of sections of the bureaucracy
‘I guess some people are in fact actually illegal on stolen land.’
Pavlou then shared that officers alerted him to the fact he’d entered the country with the wrong paperwork and needed to have applied for a different visa.
He later shared a video declaring: ‘Billie Eilish reported me to ICE and got me deported cause I joked about flying to the US and moving into her mansion. She literally said “no one is illegal on stolen land” but called ICE on me. Honestly amazing performance art, I somehow managed to get Billie Eilish and American liberals to endorse border control and deportations. The pain was worth it for the meme.’
Sharing his final thoughts on his stunt, Pavlou said: ‘I can’t even be mad because it’s kind of funny. It’s obviously a joke…who else takes jokes this far.’
Pavlou first gained prominence in 2020 when he was suspended for two years from the University of Queensland, after he was alleged to have undertaken 11 instances of misconduct.
He went on to unsuccessfully run for parliament the following year and since then has gained a profile for speaking out against immigration and lamenting the loss of ‘Australian identity’.
Soon after Billie’s speech gained plenty of attention, a spokesperson for the Tongva tribute told The Daily Mail that they had reached out to her ‘to express our appreciation for her comments.’
‘As the First People of the greater Los Angeles basin, we do understand that her home is situated in our ancestral land. Eilish has not contacted our tribe directly regarding her property,’ they said in a statement.
‘We do value the instances when public figures provide visibility to the true history of this country,’ they added.
Metro has contacted representatives for Billie Eilish for comment.
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