Alistair Kitchen, an Australian writer and former student in the U.S., was deported from the United States after writing articles supporting student protests at Columbia University against Israel.
Kitchen arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from his home in Melbourne, Australia. Upon arrival, he was detained for an extended interrogation and then put on a flight back to Australia. He claims the reason for his deportation was his personal blog and articles in which he voiced support for the pro-Palestinian student protests at Columbia.
Kitchen said he was questioned for 12 hours, during which he was asked about his views on the war in Gaza and on Hamas. “It was clear I was targeted for political reasons,” he said. “The officers examined my opinions on Israel and Palestine, including my stance on Hamas. They asked broad questions about the conflict, the student protests, what Israel should have done differently, and how I would resolve the conflict. It was a deep investigation into my political views.”
Kitchen had lived in the U.S. for six years as a student before returning to Australia in 2024. During his time in the U.S., he maintained a blog where he published essays critical of Israel’s war on Hamas and of U.S. policies, particularly the arrests of students supporting Palestinian causes.
“As a creative writing student, I took the opportunity to document the protests in detail on my personal blog,” he said. “The immigration officers explicitly told me I was detained because of my writing about the student protests at Columbia.”
In one of his blog posts, Kitchen commented on the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent protest leader at Columbia University. He condemned the arrest, writing that Khalil was detained on entirely dubious grounds by a neo-fascist state aiming to silence dissent.