Rapper 21 Savage’s Immigration Status Still Undetermined Until Criminal Case is Cleared

UK-born rapper 21 Savage’s legal team say his immigration fight is on hold as he faces gun and drug charges.

U.S. immigration officials state the now 29-year-old rapper’s legal immigration visa expired in 2006 when he was a teenager and his mother — who brought him to the U.S. from Britain — never renewed it. Therefore, the U.S. government has targeted him for return to the UK.

The loudly anti-Trump rapper has been fighting against the deportation order for three years. But now that case has been paused as he faces more pressing matters stemming from his arrest in 2019 on drug and gun charges.

Police in DeKalb County, Georgia, were called in 2019 when the rapper allegedly tossed a bottle that later tested positive for traces of the illegal drug codeine. He was also found with an illegal gun in his car when he was arrested.

The rapper was arrested only days after trashing President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. However, the Dekalb D.A. did not officially charge Savage until 2021.

21’s immigration attorney Charles Kuck told TMZ the fight against deportation has been set aside while the singer faces the other, more serious charges.

Regardless, attorney Kuck claims the gun and drug charges and the immigration case are just an example of the “harassment” his client faces from the government.

“Last night’s manufactured charges are yet another example of how our justice system, from ICE down to the local level, unjustly targets young Black men who seek to exercise their rights,” Kuck said when Savage turned himself in to the police last September. “There is no legitimate basis for these charges nor for ICE’s continued antics, and we will fight until Mr. Joseph is justly vindicated.”

Kuck noted that the rapper is still working at festivals and can travel inside the U.S. as his cases wind their way through the courts. But if he were to leave the U.S.A. he would not be able to return because of his lapsed visa.

Savage has also been heard insisting that all illegals should be given automatic citizenship.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston