Brown Medicine professor and doctor deported to Lebanon despite having valid visa, court filings claim

A doctor and professor was deported after she returned from a trip to Lebanon despite having a valid U.S. visa, according to a court petition filed on her behalf.

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor at Brown Medicine, held an H-1B visa when she traveled to her home country to visit her family, according to the petition, which was filed in federal court by a cousin who learned of her situation.

Court documents alleged that upon returning to the United States at the end of last week, she was held at Boston Logan International Airport for 36 hours before she was sent back to Lebanon this weekend in violation of a federal judge’s order to halt her deportation.

The initial petition Friday claimed that Customs and Border Protection had detained her “without any justification,” during which Alawieh had been uncontactable and unable to access legal counsel.

“CBP has refused to provide any information on the reason for her detention and expedited removal, nor to confirm the flight,” the petition said.

The same day, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ordered that Alawieh should not be removed from the state without 48 hours’ notice and a reason in order to “give the Court time to consider the matter.”

An attorney for Alawieh confirmed that she is now back in Lebanon but declined to comment further. 

Customs and Border Protection said in an emailed statement, “Arriving aliens bear the burden of establishing admissibility to the United States.” 

“Our CBP Officers adhere to strict protocols to identify and stop threats, using rigorous screening, vetting, strong law enforcement partnerships, and keen inspectional skills to keep threats out of the country,” Hilton Beckham, CBP’s assistant commissioner of public affairs, said in the statement. 

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A notice of court order violation filed Saturday said CBP “had actual notice of this Court’s order and willfully disobeyed this Court’s order.” It further requested an order to return Alawieh to Massachusetts immediately and to schedule an emergency hearing as soon as practicable.

Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen, had been issued an H-1B visa for her employment at Brown Medicine, the petition said. She obtained her medical degree from the American University of Beirut in 2015 and completed her residency in 2018 at the American University of Beirut Medical Center.

Since she entered the United States on a J-1 visa in 2018, Alawieh went on to complete programs at Ohio State University, the University of Washington and the Yale Waterbury Internal Medicine Program before she started her assistant professorship at Brown.

“The Division of Nephrology at Brown Medicine is extremely distressed at this treatment of their colleague,” the court petition said. “She is an assistant professor and has serious responsibilities. Her colleagues have been covering for her, but that is no solution.”

Brown University spokesperson Brian Clark said in a statement that the university is “seeking to learn more about what has happened, but we need to be careful about sharing information publicly about any individual’s personal circumstances.”

The next hearing is scheduled for Monday morning.