Brown University, 17 October 2018
Brown University, 17 October 2018
A Rhode Island doctor who is an assistant professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported to Lebanon even though a judge had issued an order blocking the US visa holder’s immediate removal from the country, according to court papers, Reuters has reported.
The expulsion of Dr Rasha Alawieh, 34, is set to be the focus of a hearing on Monday before a federal judge in Boston, who on Sunday demanded information on whether US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) had “wilfully” disobeyed his order.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said that he had received a “detailed and specific” timeline of the events from an attorney working on Alawieh’s behalf that raised “serious allegations” about whether his order was violated.
The agency has not said why she was removed. However, her expulsion came as Republican President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to restrict border crossings sharply and ramp up immigration arrests.
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CBP spokesperson Hilton Beckham said that migrants bear the burden of establishing admissibility and that the agency’s officers “adhere to strict protocols to identify and stop threats.”
Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen who lives in Providence, was detained on Thursday upon arrival at Logan International Airport in Boston after travelling to Lebanon to see relatives, according to a lawsuit filed by her cousin, Yara Chehab. 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 then completing a fellowship at the University of Washington and then moving to the Yale-Waterbury Internal Medicine Programme, which she completed last June.
While in Lebanon, the US Consulate issued Alawieh with an H-1B visa authorising her entry into the United States to work at Brown University, said the lawsuit. Such visas are reserved for people from other countries who are employed in specialist occupations.
Despite that visa, CBP detained her at the airport for reasons that have still not been provided to her family members, according to the lawsuit, which argued that her rights were being violated.
In response to the lawsuit, Sorokin on Friday evening issued orders barring Alawieh’s removal from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice to the court and requiring her to be brought to a court hearing on Monday.
Yet according to the cousin’s attorneys, after that order was issued, Alawieh was flown to Paris, where she was then set to board a flight for Lebanon that had been scheduled for Sunday.
Sorokin on Sunday directed the government to provide a legal and factual response by Monday morning ahead of the previously scheduled hearing and to preserve all emails, text messages and other documents concerning Alawieh’s arrival and removal.
Concerns have also been raised in other cases about whether the Trump administration is complying with court rulings blocking parts of its political agenda.
The Trump administration said on Sunday that it has deported hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador under seldom-used wartime powers, despite a federal judge’s order temporarily barring such deportations.
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