Another white guy was deported. This Australian was straight up told that he was being deported for exercising free speech and freedom of the press.
The New Republic – Edith Olmsted / June 16, 2025 Customs Officials Deport Man for Reporting on Pro-Palestine Protests Writer Alistair Kitchen says he was targeted for his coverage of the Columbia University protests. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials reportedly told an Australian writer who was detained and deported upon his arrival in Los Angeles that he was being removed for writing about pro-Palestinian protests on his personal blog, according to The Guardian. In a thread of posts on X Sunday, Alistair Kitchen said he had just landed back in Australia after 12 hours in detention and a 30-hour round trip. “They just came out and said it: ‘We both know why you’ve been detained … it’s because of what you wrote about the protests at Columbia,’” Kitchen recounted. Kitchen, who lived in New York for six years before moving back to Australia in 2024, had written about the campus protests at Columbia University opposing Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza for his Substack blog Kitchen Counter. Kitchen was a master’s student in creative writing at Columbia at the time.