Ties Granzier, 20, and Govert Charles Wilhemus Jacob Sweep, 21, both of The Netherlands, were each charged with trespassing and taken to the Nye County Detention Center, about 250 miles north of Las Vegas, The Washington Post reported.
Both men have popular YouTube channels. Granzier has 735,000 subscribers to his channel while Sweep has more than 300,000, Insider reported.
On Tuesday, deputies with the Nye County Sheriff's Office found Granzier and Sweep's rental car parked about 3 miles into the site, the NCSO said in a statement. Granzier and Ties told the deputies that they understand English and saw "No Trespassing" signs, but ignored them, the statement said.
Granzier told deputies that he's a YouTuber, and upon searching the car deputies found cameras, a laptop and a drone inside the car, the statement said.
Sweep spoke with KTNV-TV in a jailhouse interview, and said he believed the two were kept in jail because they are YouTubers.
“If I wasn’t a YouTuber ... I’m just here for trespassing and I think it's not normal for such a small thing,” he said.
The arrests come a week before the "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us" Facebook event set for Sept. 20. Started by a college student as a joke, the event quickly went viral and attracted RSVPs from 2 million "attendees," the Post reported.
However, Sweep told KTNV-TV that "storming" Area 51 wasn't their intention.
“We didn’t have any intention to storm it because we leave one day before the actual storming dates, and we just wanted to make -- to go there,” Sweep said.
The men were each released Thursday on $500 bail, the Nye County Sheriff's Office said. They're scheduled to appear in court Monday.
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