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Tech billionaire Elon Musk is facing calls to be deported following his public feud with President Donald Trump, per Newsweek.
During Thursday's (June 5) episode of the "War Room" podcast, Steve Bannon, Trump's former White House chief strategist, claimed Musk, a South African native, was "illegal" and urged the president to deport his former ally.
"Elon Musk is illegal … Deport immediately," Bannon said.
The ex-White House chief strategist questioned Musk's immigration status amid the Tesla CEO's fallout with Trump this week. Musk, who spent over $290 million supporting Trump and other Republicans during the 2024 presidential election, called for the president to be impeached and replaced by Vice President JD Vance and slammed the administration's "big, beautiful bill" as a "disgusting abomination."
On Thursday, Bannon told the New York Times that the Trump administration should "initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien," adding that Musk "should be deported from the country immediately."
"You're going to ship these other people home. Let's start with the South Africans, OK?"
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971, moved to Canada in 1989, and later to the United States in 1992 to attend the University of Pennsylvania. The tech billionaire became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2002 after several years of living and working in the country.
Questions surrounding Musk's citizenship status stem from reports that he previously worked illegally in the United States by setting up a company while on a student visa in 1995, though he wasn't enrolled in college at the time. Musk allegedly used a J-1 student visa to enter the U.S. but instead worked on a startup without the requisite work visa.
President Joe Biden previously brought up the allegations during a campaign event, saying the "wealthiest man in the world turned out to be [an] illegal worker here when he was here."
"I'm serious. He was supposed to be in school when he came on a student visa. He wasn't in school. He was violating the law. He's talking about all these illegals coming our way?"
According to U.S. law, citizenship gained through naturalization can be revoked if it was "procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation."
"If a noncitizen violated the terms of a nonimmigrant visa, and then adjusted to immigrant (green card) status without admitting the violation, and then naturalized without admitting the violation, that person could be denaturalized on the ground that their naturalization was 'illegally procured," Amanda Frost, a legal expert at the University of Virginia, said in a statement.
There's no evidence that the Trump administration is seeking to deport Musk. However, Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law expert at Cornell Law School, said if allegations of Musk working illegally are true, then "on purely legal grounds, this would justify revoking citizenship, because if he had told the truth, he would not have been eligible for an H1-B, a green card, or naturalization."
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