Drew Pavlou, 26, says Billie Eilish got him deported from the United States. That is his claim. The rather more boring explanation — that a man who publicly announced he was flying to America to trespass on a celebrity's property, crowdfunded the trip, and has a cleared bomb threat on his record was flagged at the border for entirely routine reasons — has not gone as viral.
Pavlou posted on X on 15 February that he had spent more than 30 hours in custody at Los Angeles International Airport. 'Billie Eilish got me deported from the US — I think her legal team contacted DHS,' he wrote. 'I spent 30 hours at LAX immigration trying to explain that my shitposts were just a joke and that I didn't actually plan to personally move into her mansion.'
The post has more than 10 million views. Elon Musk replied: 'Most ironic outcome is most likely.'
Billie Eilish got me deported from the USI spent 30 hours in custody at LAX trying to explain to the agents that my shitposts about moving into her mansion on stolen land were just a jokeHer lawyers seem to have actually compiled a dossier on me because the agents were asking…pic.twitter.com/y38z3EEBRH
This started on 1 February. Eilish accepted Song of the Year at the 68th Grammy Awards wearing an 'ICE OUT' pin and told the audience: '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. And f**k ICE, that's all I'm gonna say.'
Within hours, people pointed out that her home — a 2,100-square-foot property in Glendale, California, with a guesthouse, horse stables and an arena — sits on the ancestral land of the Tongva people, the Indigenous nation of the greater Los Angeles basin. Pavlou decided to test the logic. He announced he would fly to LA and 'move into' Eilish's mansion, arguing that if no one is illegal on stolen land, she should have no objection to finding him in her driveway.
'Everything here is completely and totally legal,' he wrote. 'I am just going to set up a tent on her driveway, and I will leave when they formally ask me to leave. No human being is illegal on stolen land.'
He launched a GoFundMe. It raised approximately $3,000 before the platform took it down. He moved to GiveSendGo and kept collecting.
Pavlou never made it to Glendale. According to his own account, CBP officers detained him on arrival and questioned him for over 30 hours. They asked whether he planned to trespass on Eilish's property. He told them he was shitposting. They asked whether he planned to contact or confront the singer. He said no. They asked whether he had ever threatened to blow up Chinese government installations.
That last question is not random. In July 2022, Pavlou was arrested at the Chinese Embassy in London during a protest against the Uyghur genocide. Metropolitan Police alleged he had emailed a bomb threat to the embassy — a threat Pavlou insists was fabricated by the Chinese state using a fake email address. He was held for 23 hours, denied access to a lawyer, and released without charge. The case was eventually dropped, but it remains on his file; the kind of thing that would absolutely come up in a CBP database when a foreign national with a history of international protest incidents lands at an American airport and has recently announced plans to trespass on a celebrity's property.
Source: International Business Times UK
