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How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation
As an Australian who wrote about the demonstrations while on campus, I gave my phone a superficial clean before flying to the U.S. I underestimated what I was up against.
By Alistair Kitchen
June 19, 2025
Many people are detained at U.S. airports for reasons they find arbitrary and mysterious. I got lucky—when I was stopped by Customs and Border Protection last
week, after flying to Los Angeles from Melbourne, a border agent told me, explicitly and proudly, why I’d been pulled out of the customs line. “Look, we
both know why you are here,” the agent told me. He identified himself to me as
Adam, though his colleagues referred to him as Officer Martinez. When I said that I didn’t, he looked surprised. “It’s because of what you wrote online about
the protests at Columbia University,” he said.
They were waiting for me when I got off the plane. Officer Martinez intercepted me before I entered primary processing and took me immediately into an interrogation room in the back, where he took my phone and demanded my passcode.
When I refused, I was told I would be immediately sent back home if I did not comply. I should have taken that deal and opted for the quick deportation. But in that moment, dazed from my fourteen-hour flight, I believed C.B.P. would let me into the U.S. once they realized they were dealing with a middling writer from regional Australia. So I complied.
Then began the first “interview.” The questions focussed almost entirely on my
reporting about the Columbia student protests. From 2022 to 2024, I attended Columbia for an M.F.A. program, on a student visa, and when the encampment began
in April of last year I began publishing daily missives to my Substack, a blog that virtually no one (except, apparently, the U.S. government) seemed to read. To Officer Martinez, the pieces were highly concerning. He asked me what I thought about “it all,” meaning the conflict on campus, as well as the conflict
between Israel and Hamas. He asked my opinion of Israel, of Hamas, of the student protesters. He asked if I was friends with any Jews. He asked for my views on a one- versus a two-state solution. He asked who was at fault: Israel or Palestine. He asked what Israel should do differently. (The Department of Homeland Security, which governs the C.B.P., claims that any allegations that I’d been arrested for political beliefs are false.)
Then he asked me to name students involved in the protests. He asked which WhatsApp groups, of student protesters, I was a member of. He asked who fed me “the information” about the protests. He asked me to give up the identities of
people I “worked with.”
Unfortunately for Officer Martinez, I didn’t work with anyone. I participated in
the protests as an independent student journalist who one day stumbled upon tents on the lawn. My writing, all of which is now publicly available, was certainly sympathetic to the protesters and their demands, but it comprised an accurate and honest documentation of the events at Columbia. That, of course, was the problem.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/how-my-reporting-on-the-columbia-protests-led-to-my-deportation
The DHS spokeshole who said that Kitchen's arrest was not for political reasons is undoubtedly that lying Nazi whore Tricia McLaughlin. She rivals the other Nazi whore Karoline Leavitt in the brazenness and aggressiveness of her lies.
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