Derek Guy was a relatively unknown menswear writer with 25,000 followers on Twitter in 2022. Now, in 2025, Guyhas1.3 million followers on the platform, now called X, where this week both the vice-president of the United States and the Department of Homeland Security posted threats to deport him from the US – the country he has called home since he was a baby.
“Honestly didn’t expect this is what would happen when I joined a menswear forum 15 years ago,” Guy quipped onXon Monday. “Was originally trying to look nice for someone else’s wedding.”
The threats targeted at Guy, a fashion writer known forlampooningthesartorial decisionsof rightwing figures, includingJD Vance, marked another alarming escalation in the White House’s ongoing project to mass deport millions of immigrants – raising the prospect of an administration wielding deportation as a weapon of retribution against its critics.
But Guy’s story also laid bare the transformation of X. In a few short years, the platform has become a place where Maga and other far-right influencers not only rule the roost, but can see their trollish posts perhaps dictate policy. X may now be a sincerely dangerous place for some users to post their thoughts.
It all started withElon Musk. After taking over Twitter in 2022, the world’s richest man oversaw theimplementationof an algorithmic “for you” tab that pushed content from a bizarre array of influencers on users. Through a fateful quirk in the algorithm, Guy was among the platform’s new main characters, his incisive commentary about men’s fashion suddenly ubiquitous on people’s feeds. Guy, who got his start years earlier commenting in menswear forums before launching a blog called Die, Workwear!, was suddenly beingprofiledin GQ andinterviewedby Slate. Everyone started calling him the “menswear guy”.
Musk later rechristened Twitter as X, further loosening moderation on the platform, and restoring the accounts of users previously banned for bigotry or harassment. X became even more of a far-right haven, with white supremacist and neo-Nazi accountsrisenfrom the dead. Meanwhile Guy was frequently going viral, namely for posts teasing prominent Maga figures for their ill-fitting suits – bringing attention to the wrinkles on Trump’s trousers, and the “collar gaps” on Stephen Miller’s suit jackets.
By 2025, of course, Trump and Miller were back in the White House, pursuing a campaign promise to “remigrate” millions of everyday people out of America. In recent weeks they appeared to ramp up this ethno-nationalist project, with disturbing footage emerging online of masked, heavily armed Ice and DHS agents abducting Latino people from schools and courthouses, or kidnapping them off the streets, often separating them from their children.
Guy felt compelled to stand up and be counted.
In a longposton X, he recounted his family’s harrowing story of escaping war in Vietnam, a journey that ended with his mom carrying him across the US border while he was still an infant. Guy revealed that he was one of millions of undocumented people living in the US.
“The lack of legal immigration has totally shaped my life,” he wrote. “It has made every interaction with the law much scarier. It has shaped which opportunities I could or could not get. It has taken an emotional toll, as this legal issue hangs over your head like a black cloud.”
He was sharing his story to “push back against the idea that all undocumented immigrants are MS-13 members”, he wrote. “I know many people in my position and they are all like your neighbors.”
Guy’s post sent far-right influencers on X into a feeding frenzy. “JD Vance I know you’re reading this and you have the opportunity to do the funniest thing ever,” a user named @growing_daniel wrote about Guy’s announcement. (@Growing_Danielappearsto be the founder of a tech startup calledAbel, that uses artificial intelligence to help police write up crime reports.)
Vance did see the post,replyingwith a gif of Jack Nicholson, from the movie The Departed, slowly nodding his head with an intense, menacing look. A short time later, the official account of the Department of Homeland Security joined the fray. The federal agencyquote-tweeteda post from another far-right account, which noted Guy’s undocumented status, with a gif from the movie Spy Kids, showing a character with futuristic glasses that can zoom in on a subject from a great distance.
The message to Guy was clear: we’re watching you. Vance and DHS did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment about the posts.
Prominent far-right figures were ecstatic. “IT’S HABBENING,”postedJack Posobiec, a Maga operative with more than 3 million followers on X. Michael Knowles, the prominent Daily Wire pundit, posted a photo of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, wearing a blue-and-white sash over his suit jacket. “Hey @dieworkwear,” Knowleswroteto his one million followers, “what are your thoughts on this outfit?” The subtext of Knowles’s tweet was also clear: Bukele haspartneredwith the Trump administration to hold immigrants deported from America, with no due process, in El Salvador’s most notorious gulag.
Guy was aghast at the response. “The cruelty in today’s politics feels horribly corrosive,” he wrote. “Bringing up that hard-working immigrant families — undocumented, yes, but not violent criminals — are being ripped apart based on immigration status doesn’t bring compassion or even pause, but gleeful cheers.”
Longtime critics of X pointed to the deportation threats as evidence of the platform’s perils. “...It’s been turned into a political weapon for people who wish to use it to harm others,”notedjournalist Charlie Warzel, the author of a recentAtlantic essayarguing for people to abandon X. “It’s not the marketplace of ideas - you do not have to participate in this project! very simple!”
For now, Guy – who politely declined to comment to the Guardian about this week’s saga – is still on X, using all of this week’s attention for what he sees as good causes.
“ICE raided a downtown LA garment warehouse, arresting fourteen garment workers,” he wrote. “Many of those detained were the primary breadwinner for young children and elderly relatives. Would you consider donating to help these families?”
He also took time to taunt those calling for his deportation. When an account belonging to a luxury wristwatch dealer chastised him for “disrespecting” immigration laws, Guy responded with a one-thousand word history of how the flow of immigrants and refugees across borders over the past two centuries led to the creation of Rolex, among other luxury watch brands.
He alsoreplieddirectly to Vance’s post threatening to deport him. “i think i can outrun you in these clothes,” Guy wrote, posting a photo of the vice-president seated at a political conference, his ill-fitting suit pants riding up to his calves. “you are tweeting for likes. im tweeting to be mentioned in the National Archives and Records,” Guy added.
Guy then told the vice-president where immigration agents could find him: “Here is my house,” the “menswear guy” wrote, posting an image of a Men’s Wearhouse storefront.