Representational image.
Representational image.
A prominent kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school, Dr. Rasha Alawieh, was deported from the US despite holding a valid visa and a court order halting her expulsion.
Dr. Alawieh, 34, a Lebanese national, had travelled to Lebanon last month to visit family. Upon her return to the US on March 13, she was detained at Logan International Airport in Boston, The New York Times reported.
A legal complaint filed by her cousin, Yara Chehab, revealed that Dr. Alawieh was held at Logan International Airport in Boston.
US District Judge Leo T. Sorokin of Massachusetts issued an order on March 14 requiring the government to notify the court 48 hours before proceeding with Dr. Alawieh’s deportation.
Despite the order, Dr. Alawieh was put on a flight to Paris, en route to Lebanon.
Judge Sorokin, appointed by President Barack Obama, later expressed concerns over the potential violation of his ruling. In an order filed on March 16, the judge stated that there were "serious allegations" suggesting that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ignored the court's directive.
He has instructed the agency to respond to these claims and noted that his decision had been consistent with standard practices in the district.
Customs and Border Protection did not respond on March 16 to The New York Times’ request for clarification on why Dr. Alawieh had been detained and deported.
Lebanon is not listed among the countries targeted for entry bans by the Trump administration.
Dr. Alawieh holds a valid visa approved by the US consulate for her academic work.
She had held a visa to be in the US since 2018, when she first came to complete a two-year fellowship at Ohio State University before then completing a fellowship at the University of Washington and then moving to the Yale-Waterbury Internal Medicine Program, which she completed in June.
While in Lebanon, the US consulate issued Alawieh an H-1B visa authorising her entry into the United States to work at Brown University, the lawsuit said. Such visas are reserved for people from other countries who are employed in specialty occupations, Reuters reported.
Despite that visa, CBP detained her at the airport for reasons her family members have still not been provided, according to the lawsuit, which argued her rights were being violated.
The administration recently announced the deportation of "hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador" using wartime powers, even though a federal judge had halted such actions.
An Indian student Ranjani Srinivasan, a doctoral candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University, "self-deported" after her student visa was revoked for supporting Hamas, a designated terrorist organisation, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated.
The state department cancelled her visa on March 5, and DHS released footage showing her using the Customs and Border Protection Home App to leave the country on March 11.