Forensic Architecture, the London-based collective known for its investigations into crimes around the globe that bridge the gaps between architecture, art, design, and filmmaking, is no stranger to controversy. Having explored topics as diverse as police killings in Chicago and the torture of inmates at a Syrian prison to the business dealings of a museum board member, the group is accustomed to making headlines on a regular basis. On Wednesday, February 19, as the group’s first American survey opened to the public, Forensic Architecture’s founder said he was barred from entering the country.

In a statement sent to the Architect’s Newspaper, Eyal Weizman, who founded the group in 2010 in the British capital, said he was told last week in an email that he could not board a flight to Miami on February 14 for the opening of “True to Scale,” Forensic Architecture’s show at the Miami Dade College’s Museum of Art and Design. Weizman, who holds British and Israeli passports, said that, after attempting to re-apply for a visa at the U.S. Embassy in London, he was told that he could not travel.

“In my interview the officer informed me that my authorization to travel had been revoked because the ‘algorithm’ had identified a security threat,” Weizman’s statement reads. “He said he did not know what had triggered the algorithm but suggested that it could be something I was involved in, people I am or was in contact with, places to which I had traveled (had I recently been in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, or Somalia or met their nationals?), hotels at which I stayed, or a certain pattern of relations among these things.”

A representative for the MDC Museum of Art and Design declined to comment, saying that the matter was “not an issue involving the college.” The exhibition is slated to run through September 27.

Has Britain finally lost its marbles? For the United Kingdom to continue trading with the European Union, London’s British Museum must return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. That’s the message embedded within a clause recently added to the E.U.’s negotiating mandate, which says the British government should “address issues relating to the return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their countries of origin.”

Officials involved with the deal on both sides say that the clause is widely interpreted as a direct reference to the ancient artifacts, which were taken from the Parthenon in Athens at the start of the 19th century. The clause was added into the mandate as early as last week at the request of Greece with support from Italy, Cyprus, and Spain. The revised draft was reportedly circulated by the European Council, which sets the E.U.’s policy agenda and is staffed by the leaders of each member state who make decisions by consensus.

The mandate’s restitution clause demonstrates how E.U. member countries are using the trade negotiation as a bargaining chip for other longstanding grievances. For example, Spain is asking that the U.K. forfeit the British territory of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, and France is demanding certain conditions on fishing rights.

Greece has demanded the return of the Parthenon marbles for centuries, questioning the legality of Lord Elgin’s possession of the antiquities during his visit to Athens, which was then under the Ottoman Empire’s rule. The British government has so far refused to budge on its position or negotiate terms of repatriation. The Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009 after a $175 million build, continues to hold space for the missing marbles in its third floor Parthenon gallery, exhibiting facsimiles of the absent antiquities.