The Department of Homeland Security says it is pushing to deport Anna Delvey, the convicted fraudster who built a celebrity brand out of stiffing hotels, friends, and a private jet company, back to her native Germany. The announcement follows a viral video in which the 35-year-old demonstrated how to slip tights on underneath her ICE-mandated ankle monitor, a moment that captured everything wrong with a system that let a convicted foreign national linger in the United States for years after her sentence ended.
A DHS spokesperson told the New York Post that the agency intends to follow through on removal proceedings against Delvey, whose real name is Anna Sorokin. The spokesperson did not mince words.
"For years, she has made a mockery of the United States court system and its immigration laws. She has been released on an ankle monitor while her appeal of removal is heard."
The spokesperson added: "We look forward to sending her home soon."
Delvey's story reads like a catalog of unchecked gall. She entered the United States on a tourist visa in 2017 and never left when it expired. What she did instead was pose as a wealthy German heiress and run up bills she had no intention of paying, at luxury hotels, on private aircraft, and at five-star resorts on two continents.
The tab she left behind was staggering. She stayed at the Beekman Hotel in Manhattan from June 7 to June 27, 2017, and skipped out on an $11,518 bill. She checked into the W New York for two nights and balked at paying $503.76. In May 2017, she stuck a supposed friend with a $62,000 bill for a stay at an opulent villa in Marrakech, Morocco. That same trip saw her stiff Sir Richard Branson's Kasbah Tamadot resort for $20,000.
She also refused to pay Blade, a private jet company, $35,000 for a flight to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, that same month. Across the incidents documented at trial, Delvey racked up well over $100,000 in unpaid bills, all while living a life of manufactured glamour on other people's money.
In 2019, a Manhattan Supreme Court jury convicted Delvey of second-degree larceny, attempted grand larceny, and theft of services. The court sentenced her to four to twelve years in prison. She was released in February 2021.
Freedom lasted about a month. ICE took Delvey into custody in March 2021 on the basis of her visa violation, the expired tourist visa she had overstayed since 2017. She remained in ICE custody until October 2022, when she was released under electronic monitoring. That ankle monitor has been her constant companion since, a visible reminder of a deportation process that has moved at a pace generous enough to let her build a media persona and even appear on "Dancing with the Stars."
The broader pattern should trouble anyone who expects immigration law to mean something. A foreign national overstays a tourist visa, commits serial fraud, gets convicted, serves time, gets picked up by ICE, and then spends years on an ankle monitor while her appeal winds through the system. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has ordered green card applicants to leave the country and apply from abroad, a policy that demands more of people trying to follow the rules than the system has demanded of Delvey.
The DHS spokesperson's phrase, "made a mockery", is hard to argue with. Since her release on electronic monitoring, Delvey has not retreated from public life. She went viral just last week by posting a video showing how she puts tights on underneath her ICE ankle monitor, treating the device less like a condition of supervised release and more like a fashion accessory.
That video crystallized a problem that goes beyond one convicted scammer. When enforcement tools become content opportunities, the system's credibility erodes. An ankle monitor is supposed to restrict movement and signal accountability. For Delvey, it became a prop.
Her case is not the only one raising questions about how long removal proceedings should take. A Mexican national and former Kansas mayor convicted of voting illegally now faces removal as well, another instance where a conviction preceded a drawn-out deportation timeline.
Delvey's appeal of her removal order remains pending. The DHS statement did not specify a timeline for deportation or identify the legal mechanism that would accelerate the process. It is unclear whether any court has issued a stay or whether her attorneys have filed additional motions to delay removal.
What is clear is that DHS wants this case resolved. The agency's public statement to the Post carried an unusual degree of directness. Federal agencies do not typically editorialize about individual deportation cases. The choice to call out Delvey by name and characterize her conduct as a "mockery" suggests the department views her continued presence in the country as a symbol of enforcement gaps it wants to close.
Courts have increasingly backed the administration's authority on detention and removal. The Fifth Circuit recently handed the Trump administration a win on mandatory detention, a ruling that strengthens the legal framework for holding and removing individuals with final orders of deportation.
The Delvey case sits at the intersection of immigration enforcement and celebrity culture. She is not a sympathetic asylum seeker or a longtime resident with deep community ties. She is a convicted fraudster who overstayed a tourist visa, stole from hotels and individuals, served prison time, and then leveraged her notoriety into a media career, all while wearing a government-issued tracking device on her ankle.
Her appeal may or may not succeed. But the fact that it has taken this long to reach the point of a public DHS statement about deportation says something about the pace of the immigration court system. Cases like hers, where the facts are not in dispute, the conviction is final, and the visa violation is documented, should not require years of ankle-monitor supervision before resolution.
State governments have begun taking their own steps to track immigration status more closely. Florida will now print immigration status on driver's licenses under a law signed by Governor DeSantis, part of a broader push to ensure that status is not invisible in official interactions.
The deeper lesson of the Delvey saga is structural. The immigration court backlog and the appeals process create a system in which delay itself becomes the strategy. Every month on an ankle monitor is another month in the United States, another month to build a following, book appearances, and entrench a life that makes eventual removal more complicated, not less.
Delvey did not slip through the cracks. She was convicted, sentenced, imprisoned, and picked up by ICE. Every branch of the enforcement apparatus touched her case. And yet, years later, she remains here, famous, monitored, and apparently unbothered.
When a convicted foreign national can turn a government ankle bracelet into a viral fashion tutorial, the system is not working the way it was designed to. DHS says it looks forward to sending her home. Taxpayers have been waiting long enough.
