TikTok megastar Khaby Lame has departed the United States voluntarily after he was detained by ICE.
An ICE representative shared with DailyMail.com that Seringe Khabane Lame, an Italian citizen born in Senegal, was taken into custody by the agency on June 6 for breaching immigration laws after arriving in the U.S. on April 30.
Khaby – whose full name is Seringe Khabane Lame – was granted voluntary departure and has now left the country.
According to the statement, Lame, 25 years old, was detained at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, for exceeding the terms of his visa. He was given the option of voluntary departure on the same day and has since left the U.S.
DailyMail.com has contacted representatives for Lame for comment.
A conservative figure named Bo Loudon alleges that he reported Lame on June 6 and posted a supposed screenshot from the ICE website indicating that Lame was being held at Henderson Detention Center in Nevada. (However, Lame’s name is currently not listed in the ICE detainee database.)
TikToker Khaby Lame has departed the United States after he was detained by ICE
Since the detention, he has managed to remain active on social media. On June 7, he posted a photo of what appeared to be Venice Beach to his Instagram Stories, and a video was also shared to his TikTok (the app states the post was uploaded ‘one day ago’).
Since taking power in January, US President Donald Trump has delivered on campaign promises to tighten immigration controls and carry out a mass deportation drive – aspects of which have been challenged in US courts.
ICE has been conducting raids nearly since day one of Trump taking back control of the White House.
There have been hundreds of thousands of arrests and deportations of those in the U.S. illegally since then.
On Friday and Saturday, ICE raids in Los Angeles sparked major protests.
Khaby, who posts posts under the name @khaby.lame and moved from Senegal to Chivasso, close to Turin in Italy aged one. He officially became an Italian citizen in 2022.
The social media sensation was working as a factory worker when he was made redundant in 2020 at the start of the pandemic.
He told the New York Times that he began spending hours of his free time every day posting TikTok videos – and his comedy clips soon started going viral.
His most watched videos include him deriding a fellow TikToker who cuts himself free from a car door by shearing through his t-shirt – which has had more than 158 million views.
Lame served as assistant coach during the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game in Oakland back in February
An ICE spokesperson revealed in a statement obtained by DailyMail.com that Lame – an Italian citizen born in Senegal – was detained by the agency on June 6 due to ‘immigration violations’ after entering the U.S. on April 30
Khaby films himself in the same predicament but instead of reaching for the scissors to hack his way out of the situation, he simply opens the car door to free himself – and then offers his signature shrug of exasperation.
Another TikTok clip sees the joker mocking someone who uses a plastic pizza saver to cut their takeaway Italian staple dish into slices. Khaby simply neatly divides his own using his hands – and then lifts in shoulders in frustration.
Much of his success appears to come from the fact he doesn’t usually speak in his clips, he thinks.
While the work opportunities have flooded in since his rise to the top of the TikTok rankings, he said at the time that he’s not yet set for life…rather earning ‘steadily’ – but planned to snap up a house for his mother as soon as he could afford it.
He now rubs shoulders with A-listers, appears on red carpets and has run the catwalk at Milan Fashion Week in 2022 (pictured walking the BOSS show during Milan Fashion Week in 2023)
Khaby, a huge Juventus fan, has been open about his tough start in life, telling Olhar Digital last year: ‘Public housing is a place to which I owe everything. They taught me education and allowed me to cultivate many bonds.’
The social media comedian, who posts in English and Italian, also has no time for dramatic over-reactions – or people who offer up delayed reactions when something goes wrong, while pointless life hacks are his biggest targets.
‘I came up with the idea because I was seeing these videos circulating, and I liked the idea of bringing some simplicity to it,’ Khaby said to CNN last year, ‘I thought of a way to reach as many people as possible. And the best way was not to speak.’
The star told the US newspaper that the success behind his videos are down to the fact that he speaks a ‘global language’, saying he has a huge following in Brazil and South America.
He now rubs shoulders with A-listers, appears on red carpets and has run the catwalk at Milan Fashion Week in 2022.
Last month, he attended the star-studded Met Gala.
