Popular online political commentator Hasan Piker was stopped and questioned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Chicago as he was returning to the United States from France, Piker said on his Twitch broadcast on Monday.
A U.S. citizen born in New Jersey, Piker has 2.8 million followers on Twitch and is a prominent leftist political commentator. On Monday, he said he was taken to a private room inside Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Sunday.
He said he was questioned about his political views and his political commentary on his social media accounts. Piker said that he was stopped for questioning despite being enrolled in the government’s Global Entry program, which normally expedites re-entry to the United States.
“They straight up tried to get something out of me that I think they could use to basically detain me permanently,” Piker said. “(The agent) kept saying stuff like, ‘Do you like Hamas? Do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a terror group or a resistance group?’” Piker described the interaction with the agents as “cordial,” and said he was asked about his views on President Donald Trump and whether he had been in contact with Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis.
“The reason for why they’re doing that is I think to try to create an environment of fear to try to get people like myself or at least others that would be in my shoes that don’t have that same level of security to shut the (expletive) up,” Piker said on the stream. “I’m gonna use the privilege that I have in that moment to try and see what the (expletive) they’re doing.”