For the second time this season, a contestant has been pulled from Love Island USA over resurfaced racist posts.
After weeks of fans calling on Love Island producers to hold Cierra Ortega responsible for her insensitive social media posts, she was officially sent home during episode 30 on Sunday, July 6. This comes following a similar situation earlier in this season, where contestant Yulissa Escobar was removed from the villa in the middle of the night following resurfaced videos of her repeatedly using the n-word.
During Sunday’s episode of the Peacock series, narrator Iain Stirling revealed that Cierra “left the villa due to a personal situation” and noted that her longtime partner Nic Vansteenberghe is “officially single.” Nic then shared a conversation with Ace Greene about how he wasn’t sure what he would do next, just one week before the end of the season.
Ortega’s exit comes after multiple posts from her social media resurfaced while she was filming in Fiji. In one post from 2024, Cierra used a derogatory term for Chinese people to refer to her eyes while describing her reasons for getting Botox procedures. She used the same slur back in 2015, and while some were willing to be more forgiving over her first offense, using the word again just a year ago is what upset many fans of the reality series.
While Cierra has not had access to social media during her time on the show, her parents posted on her Instagram Story after Sunday’s episode, saying that the online response to her alleged old posts went “far beyond” seeking accountability and devolved into “threats” and “cruel messages.”
Though these screenshots have been circulating throughout Cierra’s time on the show, fans pointed to the earlier removal of Yulissa as reason to remove Cierra. It’s unclear why it took producers so long to act on Cierra’s removal, but it also points to a bigger problem of Love Island’s casting process and apparent lack of due diligence when picking its contestants.
Hopefully, the multiple incidents this season will result in more rigorous background checks for future seasons.
