Australian deported from US says he was ‘targeted’ due to writing on pro-Palestine student protests

Defence affairs 

Alistair Kitchen says he was detained and questioned about views on Israel and Palestine before being deported from LA to Melbourne.

An Australian man who was detained upon arrival at Los Angeles airport and deported back to Melbourne says United States border officials told him it was due to his writing on pro-Palestine protests by university students.

Alistair Kitchen said he left Melbourne on Thursday bound for New York and was detained for 12 hours and interrogated by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials during the stopover in Los Angeles.

The 33-year-old said he was “clearly targeted for politically motivated reasons” and said officials spent more than 30 minutes questioning him about his views on Israel and Palestine including his “thoughts on Hamas”.

Kitchen said he was deported and landed back in Melbourne on Saturday morning.

“The CBP explicitly said to me, the reason you have been detained is because of your writing on the Columbia student protests,” he told Guardian Australia on Sunday. The US Department of Homeland Security has been contacted for comment.

Kitchen said he lived in New York for six years and wrote about the protests staged in support of Gaza at Columbia University while he was a master’s student at the college, before he moved back to Australia in 2024.

“Because I was a creative writing student, I took the opportunity to witness the protests and wrote about them in depth on my personal blog,” he said.