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A Turkish national who spent years constructing an elaborate public identity as a senior White House communications official and Trump Organization insider has been taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He is now held at a detention facility in Newark, New Jersey.
The arrest of Melih Gogebakan, confirmed by ICE's official detainee locator system, has exposed what Turkish media and alleged victims describe as a sustained, multi-year fraud operation that preyed on Turkish nationals seeking American investor visas, and that drew in the names, photographs, and apparent social validation of prominent Turkish public figures and U.S. government officials.
ICE records list Gogebakan, born in Türkiye, as currently in custody at the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, New Jersey.
No independent public record corroborates any of the professional titles he used across his social media profiles and promotional materials.
Melih Gogebakan reached out to Türkiye Today last year to publish articles, apparently in an attempt to solidify his image as a DC insider who works closely with White House circles. However, Türkiye Today refused his request as he failed to meet journalistic standards.
The scale and ambition of Gogebakan's self-promotional operation is visible across years of Facebook and LinkedIn activity.
His Facebook account featured repeated check-ins and posts tagged at the White House, including at least one labeled by the platform itself as AI-generated content, in which he described spending three intensive days inside the building working on behalf of President Trump, tagging both the official @whitehouse and @potus accounts.
A separate post, also tagged at the White House, announced that "final checks" were being carried out ahead of a Trump press conference, again tagging official government accounts as though he were a participant in the operation.
Among his most striking posts was a January 2026 Facebook entry, also flagged by the platform as AI-generated content, in which Gogebakan appeared to congratulate Anthony D'Esposito on his swearing-in as inspector general of the U.S. Department of Labor. Published photographs show the two men together at what appeared to be an official ceremony and at a Trump campaign event.
In the post, Gogebakan described D'Esposito as a friend and wrote that he had "always been by our side at Trump Media," language that implied a formal organizational relationship with the Trump media apparatus.
D'Esposito, a former Republican congressman from New York's 4th district and former NYPD detective, was confirmed by the Senate in December 2025 and assumed office on Jan. 5, 2026.
His office did not respond to requests for comment. There is no public record indicating any formal connection between D'Esposito and Gogebakan.
On LinkedIn, Gogebakan described himself as "Communications Lead for Trump Media and the Trump Organization," responsible for "strategic communications, brand positioning, and global media relations" from New York.
His profile is linked to a company registered as USA Melih LLC. His Facebook page displayed a cover photo promoting Trump Hotel Dubai, and included a co-branded post featuring an AI-generated image of Eric Trump standing alongside Gogebakan, which was also shared on LinkedIn under the label "International Media Coordinator."
Turkish media, citing the social media account Anka Kusu, reported that Gogebakan was in fact working as an Uber driver at the time he was presenting himself to the public, and to visa applicants, as a Washington power broker.
According to Turkish media, Gogebakan systematically targeted Turkish citizens seeking the E-2 investor visa, a non-immigrant category available to nationals of treaty countries, including Türkiye, who wish to enter the United States to manage a qualifying investment.
He told prospective clients he was a Trump Media employee and a personally connected advisor to the president, with the ability to smooth their path to residency.
To establish trust, he showed victims documents bearing official-looking U.S. Congress letterhead, photographs of himself alongside Turkish politicians and diplomats, and told them their applications would be processed through an American immigration attorney named "Martin."
Each applicant paid $3,000. None of their E-2 applications were ever filed in any official U.S. immigration system. Victims, some of whom waited months before suspecting anything was wrong, say they are now preparing to pursue legal action.
Attorneys representing those affected say they are filing criminal complaints simultaneously with public prosecutors' offices in Türkiye and with U.S. cybercrime units.
Gogebakan's Facebook archive shows a parallel effort to accumulate social legitimacy through photographs and public associations with well-known figures.
His posts document attendance at iftar dinners organized by the Turkish Consulate General in New York, where he appears in photographs alongside Türkiye's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, ambassadors and community leaders.
He also attended events with a U.S. senator, according to his own posts.
Among those whose comments appeared beneath his posts were prominent Turkish public figures including singer and television personality Sinan Engin and rap artist Lvbel C5, whose visible association with his content lent further surface credibility to the image he was constructing.
The fraud allegations drew former Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu into the story because Gogebakan had shown photographs of himself alongside Soylu to potential visa victims as a trust-building tactic.
Soylu, who served as interior minister from 2016 to 2023 and remains one of the more prominent figures in the ruling AK Party, responded on social media on August 2 with a sharp denial of any involvement, calling the association "slander" and saying it was unjust for his name to be pulled into a fraud investigation on the basis of nothing more than a photograph.
He added a pointed remark that his parliamentary immunity would eventually expire, widely interpreted as a warning that legal action was being considered against those responsible for the coverage.
Gogebakan's detention comes as Delaney Hall has become one of the most visible and contested symbols of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement expansion.
The 1,000-bed facility in Newark, operated by the private prison company GEO Group under a contract exceeding $1 billion, was reopened in May 2025 as one of the first new ICE detention centers of Trump's second term.
Since then, it has been the site of detainee hunger strikes, clashes between federal agents and protesters outside its gates, a death in custody, congressional oversight hearings and a lawsuit filed by the city of Newark over alleged permitting violations.
Immigration law specialists quoted by Turkish media warned that no licensed American immigration attorney may legally act on a client's behalf without a signed retainer agreement, and that prominent publicly traded companies such as Trump Media play no role in facilitating individual visa applications.
They urged prospective applicants to be deeply skeptical of any intermediary who communicates exclusively through messaging apps and avoids direct contact between the client and their supposed attorney.
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