A Brown University assistant professor and doctor was deported over the weekend from Boston to Lebanon despite having a valid United States work visa, defying a judge’s order blocking her immediate removal from the country. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is a Lebanese citizen who visited her home country last month to visit relatives. She was detained on March 13 when she returned from that trip to the US, according to a report by The New York Times. The development has come at a time when the President Donald Trump administration has been ramping up immigration arrests and targeting universities. Here is a look at who Dr Alawieh is, and why she was deported. Who is Rasha Alawieh? Alawieh got her bachelor of science and medical doctorate degrees from the American University of Beirut in 2011 and 2015 respectively, according to a report by The Brown Daily Herald — the student newspaper of Brown University. She subsequently completed her residency at the American University of Beirut Medical Center in 2018. “That same year, Alawieh was approved to come to the US on a J-1 student visa,” the report said. In July 2024, Alawieh started her assistant professorship at Brown Medicine, which sponsored her H-1B visa. The visa allows employers to hire foreign workers for positions that require speciality knowledge. The doctor’s visa petition was approved in June 2024, according to the report. Alawieh worked at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease and Hypertension. Why was Alawieh deported? The US federal prosecutors alleged that they deported Alawieh after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” on her cellphone of prominent figures of Iran-backed Hezbollah. Alawieh told federal agents that she had recently attended the funeral of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective”, according to Reuters. Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in September 2024, led Hezbollah for more than 30 years. He was also regarded as a prominent religious leader in the region. In a statement obtained by Reuters, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, called the deportation “commonsense security”. “A visa is a privilege, not a right — glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied,” she said. Alawieh was deported despite US District Judge Leo Sorokin’s order, on March 14, that the doctor "shall not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without providing the Court 48 hours’ advance notice,” saying it was necessary “to give the Court time to consider the matter.”
