Jeremy Meeks, aka Hot Mugshot Guy, claims to have been “deported” from the UK just eight hours after arriving at Heathrow.
The model flew into the UK on Monday 24 April to star in some magazine cover shoots, but according to Meeks and his manager Jim Jordan, he was detained by UK border officials on arrival and was flown back to the US.
“He wasn’t arrested but they deported him out of the country,” Jordan told the Daily Mail.
“They wouldn’t let him come into the country. He is really upset. He was police-escorted onto the plane.”
Meeks’ modelling career has been going from strength-to-strength since his mugshot photo racked up more than 80,000 likes when it was posted on the Stockton Police Department Facebook page in 2014, (he’d been arrested for gun charges).
The 32-year-old father-of-two, from California, US, signed a modelling contract with White Cross Management on his release in 2016.
Most recently he made his catwalk debut for Philipp Plein at New York Fashion Week in February.
Meeks may have had to miss out on some cover shoots, but you can see more of him in the latest issue of British magazine Man About Town, which launches on Thursday 27 April.
A Home Office spokesperson said they would not comment on individual cases, but explained that:
“all passengers attempting to enter the UK are subject to checks by Border Force officers to establish they meet the entry requirements of the immigration rules.”
They added that the Immigration Rules state that leave to enter will be refused if the person seeking entry: “has been convicted of an offence for which they have been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least 12 months but less than four years, unless a period of 10 years has passed since the end of the sentence”.