[PUBLISH.TWITTER]
| The Times of Israel lays it all out: |
US customs officials expel Lebanese doctor before hearing, against court order
Officers deport Rasha Alawieh after reportedly finding ‘sympathetic photos and videos’ of Hezbollah figures on her phone, say they were unaware of court order barring her expulsion
Foreigner who supports a listed terror group is here on a temporary visa? Send her home — there are plenty of foreigners with her skills who don’t feel the need to carry Nasrallah videos on their phone so they’re always available. A doctor from Leb
 ...The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else?...
who arrived at the Boston airport was deported over the weekend without explanation, despite having a US visa and a job teaching at Brown University.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh had been granted a visa on March 11 and flew into Boston on Thursday, according to a complaint filed on her behalf by a cousin, Yara Chehab, in federal court.
Upon landing, Customs and Border Protection officers detained her at the airport for at least 36 hours, through Friday, and planned to send her back to Lebanon.
Three days later, Justice Department lawyers claimed that officers deported Alawieh after finding "sympathetic photos and videos" of prominent Hezbollah figures in the deleted items folder of her cellphone, Politico reported Monday.
"CBP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that her true intentions in the United States could not be determined," Assistant US Attorney Michael Sady wrote in the court filing.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin issued an earlier order on Friday that an in-person hearing was scheduled for 10 a.m. on Monday, with Alawieh brought to court. The order barred Alawieh’s removal from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice to the judges.
But on Saturday, the cousin filed a motion claiming customs officials "willfully" disobeyed the judge by putting Alawieh on a plane headed for Gay Paree, where she was then set to board a flight for Lebanon.
Sorokin seemed to concur with the cousin’s claim, writing that there was reason to believe customs officials had knowingly flouted his previous order, the New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
reported.
However he apparently walked this back just as the hearing was set to begin Monday morning, according to CNN
...formerly the Cable News Network , now who know what it might stand for...
, after reportedly receiving testimony that customs officials had only been made aware of his order following Alawieh’s departure from the US.
Lawyers for the government explained in a court filing Monday that officers at the airport did not receive notice of the order until she "had already departed the United States," the judge noted. They asked that the petition be dismissed.
The judge put a hearing on her case on hold, to give Sorokin’s lawyers time to prepare.
Alawieh, a 34-year-old kidney transplant specialist who previously worked and lived in Rhode Island, was to start work at Brown University as an assistant professor of medicine.
She had worked at Brown prior to the issuance of her H-1B visa, which is granted to skilled foreign nationals to work in the US, the complaint said.
She had held a visa to be in the United States since 2018, when she first came to complete a two-year fellowship at Ohio State University. Before that, she had completed a fellowship at the University of Washington and then moved to the Yale-Waterbury Internal Medicine Program, which she finished in June.
A spokesperson for Brown said Alawieh is an employee of Brown Medicine, with a clinical appointment to Brown.
Her expulsion is the latest move against a foreign-born person with a US visa in the past week, after an anti-Israel student activist at Columbia University was arrested and another student’s visa was revoked.
The Trump administration also transferred hundreds of immigrants colonists to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations.
"My colleagues and I are outraged over Dr Alawieh’s deportation. She is a valued colleague and we hope for justice and her return to Rhode Island," said George Bayliss, an associate professor of medicine at Brown University.
US Representative Gabe Amo of Rhode Island, a Democrat, said in a statement over the weekend that is "committed to getting answers from the Department of Homeland Security to provide Dr. Alawieh, her family, her colleagues, and our community the clarity we all deserve."
Brown University Tells International Students, Staff to Avoid Travel Abroad
[MSN-WSJ] Brown University is warning international students and staff members not to travel outside the country after one of its professors with a work visa was deported after a trip to Leb
In a campuswide email sent Sunday and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, Brown said that "out of an abundance of caution" it was asking those from outside the U.S.—including those with visas or green cards—to postpone or delay personal travel abroad.
Brown, whose campus is in Providence, R.I., said potential changes in travel bans and re-entry requirements "may affect travelers’ ability to return to the U.S. as planned." The Ivy League school said it was making the recommendations ahead of spring break, which is next week.
The email follows the detention and deportation of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor at Brown University and kidney-transplant specialist. Immigration officials held Alawieh, a holder of a Brown-sponsored H1B visa, at Logan International Airport when she was trying to re-enter the U.S. from a trip to Lebanon, her home country.
The H1B visa program, created by Congress in 1990, allows high-skilled foreign workers to come to the U.S. Visa holders can eventually apply for green cards and stay in the country indefinitely.
Homeland Security said Alawieh returned to Lebanon "to attend the funeral of His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
—a brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree."
Federal prosecutors said Alawieh had pictures on her phone of Nasrallah and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
...the very aged actual dictator of Iran, successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...>
, the leader of Iran, and that she deleted the photos shortly before returning to the U.S.
A little more than just innocent photos. She showed awareness and intention. Alawieh told immigration agents that she doesn’t support Hezbollah.
Then why did she go halfway around the world to attend that funeral? She said she is a member of WhatsApp groups with families and friends who share such photos, according to a transcript of her interview with Customs and Border Protection, filed to the U.S. District Court in Boston.
Alawieh said that Nasrallah, a Shia Moslem, was highly regarded in the Shia community as "a religious figure," prosecutors wrote. Alawieh follows him for his religious and spiritual teachings but not his politics, prosecutors said.
In Islam the two are linked. Earlier this month, other schools warned about travel ahead of spring break. Dartmouth College told international staff and students to be aware of possible travel bans.
Columbia University, meanwhile, told international students to "exercise caution" when traveling abroad. It also asked those from countries that were part of previous travel bans, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea
...hereditary Communist monarchy distinguished by its truculence and periodic acts of violence. Distinguishing features include Songun (Army First) policy, which involves feeding the army before anyone but the Dear Leadership, and Juche, which is Kim Jong Il's personal interpretation of Marxism-Leninism, which he told everybody was brilliant. In 1950 the industrialized North invaded agrarian South Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force opposing the invasion, with the United States providing around 90% of the military personnel. Seventy years later the economic results are in and it doesn't look good for Juche...
, Pakistain, Somalia, Sudan
...a Moslem country located in the Horn of Africa. It is noted for its affinity for rule by ex- or current generals, its holy men, and for the oppression of the native Afro population by its Arab conquerors. South Sudan, populated mostly by the natives, split off from Sudan proper, which left North and South Darfur to be oppressed by the guys with turbans...
, Syria, Venezuela
...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south...
and Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of...
, to "avoid non-essential travel outside of the U.S."
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