Rasha Alawieh was removed after arriving at Boston airport on Thursday
Alawieh said she attended Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral
REUTERS
BOSTON, March 17 (Reuters) – U.S. authorities on Monday said they deported a Rhode Island doctor to Lebanon last week after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” of the former longtime leader of Hezbollah and militants in her cell phone’s deleted items folder.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh had also told agents that while in Lebanon she attended the funeral last month of Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective” as a Shi’ite Muslim.
The U.S. Department of Justice provided those details as it sought to assure a federal judge in Boston that U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not willfully disobey an order he issued on Friday that should have halted Alawieh’s immediate removal.
The 34-year-old Lebanese citizen, who held an H-1B visa, was detained on Thursday at Logan International Airport in Boston after returning from a trip to Lebanon to see family. Her cousin then filed a lawsuit seeking to halt her deportation.
Her expulsion came as Republican U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to sharply restrict border crossings and ramp up immigration arrests.
In its first public explanation for her removal, the Justice Department said Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and assistant professor at Brown University, was denied re-entry to the United States based on what CBP found on her phone and statements she made during an airport interview.
According to a transcript of that interview reviewed by Reuters, she told CBP she did not support Hezbollah but had high regard for Nasrallah because of her religion.
“I’m not a political person,” she said. “I’m a physician. It’s mainly about faith.”
Western governments including the United States designate Hezbollah a terrorist group. The Lebanese militant group is part of the “Axis of Resistance”, an alliance of Iran-backed groups across the Middle East that also includes the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which sparked the Gaza war by attacking Israel 17 months ago.
Based on those statements and the discovery of photos on her phone of Nasrallah and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, the Justice Department said CBP concluded “her true intentions in the United States could not be determined.”
“A visa is a privilege not a right – glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “This is commonsense security.”
FIGHT CONTINUES
Stephanie Marzouk, a lawyer for Alawieh’s cousin Yara Chehab, told reporters outside of court on Monday that they were “not going to stop fighting.”
Hours later, hundreds of demonstrators, including some of her colleagues from the hospital, gathered on the lawn of the Rhode Island State House in Providence to show their support, carrying signs that said “Her visa was valid,” “She did nothing wrong,” and “Stop mass deportation now.”
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