Alistair Kitchen believed deleting his social media content would be enough to avoid scrutiny when travelling to the US. He was wrong. On 12 June, the 33-year-old writer from Victoria, Australia, boarded a flight from Melbourne to New York to visit friends. But during a stopover at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), he was pulled aside by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and never made it to his destination.
What followed was a gruelling 12-hour interrogation that ended with Kitchen being deported back to Australia. Since then, he has claimed the decision was politically motivated, linked to his pro-Palestinian writings and coverage of protests at Columbia University.
