A brief look at the exchange between a social media provocateur and Billie Eilish that ended with the man denied entry to the United States.
An Australian man said he joked about flying to Los Angeles to move into Billie Eilish’s $6 million Malibu home after referencing her Grammys remark that “nobody is illegal on stolen land,” and he says the episode ended with immigration involvement. He claims the singer alerted authorities, which led to his detention and removal from the country. The account has since circulated widely online and raised questions about how public calls can trigger government action.
“Billie Eilish reported me to ICE and got me deported from the U.S.,” Pavlou said in a video on X. “Honestly, I can’t even be really mad because it’s kind of funny. But basically, I was joking online that I was gonna fly to America and move into her mansion.” He described the post as intended to be a meme rather than a real plan, and said the reaction surprised him.
“It’s obviously a meme,” he said. “And I get stopped by DHS and held for like 30 hours. Literally 30 hours.” Pavlou stressed that he never intended to trespass and framed the whole sequence as an absurd escalation from an online joke to a long detention. He emphasized the time he spent in custody and the bewilderment he felt at the process.
They’re asking me, how do you know Billie Eilish? Do you intend to trespass? No, of course not, man. It’s a joke. It was like a meme that I came up with on Instagram.
And I get held for 30 hours and deported. I get basically escorted onto a plane by armed guards, sent back to Australia. And I think it’s actually amazing performance art.
As a joke, I managed to get Billie Eilish, Hollywood celebrities, left-wingers, liberals to agree with ICE, to agree with border control. They suddenly support deportations because they don’t like my memes. They don’t like me as a person.
Officials, according to reporting tied to the case, treated the incident not as a straightforward criminal matter but as a potential visa violation, which is why Pavlou was denied entry rather than formally processed through a deportation order from inside the United States. Immigration officers apparently cited suspected intent to overstay or engage in unauthorized activity as grounds for refusing admission. That distinction matters legally: being denied entry at a border or port of entry is different from an in-country removal proceeding.
Eilish’s “lawyers seem to have actually compiled a dossier on me because the agents were asking me about my entire history as an activist opposed to the Chinese government, whether I had ever plotted to assassinate Chinese Communist Party officials; it was legitimately insane,” Pavlou wrote in a separate post on X. “I suffered for my art as an online shitposter. I was victimised and martyred by Billie Eilish.” He presented the interaction with agents as intrusive and tied it to a broader narrative about online performance and its real-world consequences.
“I think it was actually a total victory,” he added despite failing to reach Eilish’s mansion. “All these people are laughing at me. No, it’s actually a total victory. I managed to get left-wingers and Billie Eilish to support ICE. I managed to get them to support border control and deportations. I managed to get the entire American left in favour of deportations in one day with one simple trick.” His framing turned the incident into a commentary about how political positions can shift when an incident hits close to home.
Observers noted that public figures and their legal teams can prompt official attention when they believe a threat or harassment exists, and immigration authorities routinely act on information provided by third parties when screening entrants. The case highlights the intersection of celebrity, social media stunts, and government discretion at ports of entry. It also underscores how quickly a viral joke can escalate into a situation with serious travel consequences.
“And I guess at the end of the day, I’m just a ‘Bad Guy,'” he said, referencing a hit Billie Eilish song. The tongue-in-cheek tie back to the singer’s work capped his public statements and reinforced his claim that the episode was intended as comedy. Whether seen as performance art or a reckless provocation, the episode serves as a reminder that online antics sometimes have immediate, real-world outcomes.
