Joe Exotic says husband has been ‘detained by US immigration’ just weeks after getting married
The Netflix personality shared the news on social media.
Just weeks after marrying his sixth husband, Joe Exotic has claimed he is being held in an ICE detention centre.
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) are a pivotal body involved in Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, in which the US President has stated he is planning the ‘largest deportation operation’ targeting ‘illegal immigrant criminals’.
The Tiger King star, 62, is currently in prison under a 21-year sentence for attempted murder for hire.
Exotic – real name Joseph Allen Maldonado – announced his engagement to his fellow inmate Jorge Flores Maldonado in October and confirmed they had tied the knot in an Instagram post near the end of April.
Now, in a new post to his 370,000 followers he has claimed that his husband, 33, has been detained by the body as he issued a plea to President Trump.
‘They have officially taken him to an ICE detention Center for his hearing to either stay in America or go back to Mexico,’ he wrote in the caption to a photo of the pair together.
He posted an update saying he has hopes of being reunited with Jorge (Picture: Instagram/Joe Exotic)He added: ‘Potus, [Stephen Miller, Homeland Security advisor] don’t you think between losing my life’s work, my parents and now this that I’ve suffered enough and it’s time to watch season 2 of Tiger King and see they admitted on world television the committed perjury and let me go?’
Then he posted a follow-up thanking his husband for giving him ‘the most loving and devoted 10 months of my life.’
Exotic shared that gangs came up to him to ‘check to see how I was holding up since he left’.
Elsewhere in the lengthy caption he added: ‘We need to get some serious campaigns going to get Trump to let me go. No matter where I am, I’m fine with Mexico or America, as long as I spend my last days with Jorges and said he ‘prays Trump signs my pardon soon’.
A source has confirmed to TMZ that Exotic’s husband was released from his prison in Texas and ‘immediately deported to Mexico’ just hours after Exotic’s initial post.
TMZ has claimed that his husband was deported to Mexico just hours after being released (Picture: X/Joe Exotic)In his post announcing their marriage, Exotic had written: ‘Never been more proud of someone. Meet my husband, Jorge Flores Maldonado.’
And in another message, shared: ‘He has gotten me through so much fighting cancer under these conditions. All I pray to God for is Trump will allow me to enjoy a little life outside with him before it’s too late. I love you Jorge you are my life.’
He had expressed concerns over Jorge’s right to stay in the US in the past, writing at the time: ‘Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we be leaving America when we both get out. Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago.’
And adding he ‘needed to convince Trump to let me keep him in America’.
Exotic is serving a 21 year sentence for an attempted murder for hire plot (Picture: AP)His current prison sentence is as a result of his attempted murder for hire plot to kill Carole Baskin – in which prosecutors said he offered $10,000 (£7,500) to an undercover FBI agent to do the task – as well as 19 counts of animal abuse.
The feud between Exotic (formerly the owner of an Oklahoma zoo) and Baskin is the subject of the popular 2020 Netflix documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.
Exotic’s first husband, Brian Rhyne, married him in the late 1980s before dying of HIV complications in 2001.
He was then married to JC Hartpence, John Finlay, the late Travis Maldonado and briefly to Dillon Passage before meeting Jorge.
Metro has reached out to Joe Exotic’s legal representatives for comment.
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