A hearing is set for this morning after a Brown University doctor was deported to Lebanon despite a US judge's order [View all]

Source: CNN US

Updated 9:37 AM EDT, Mon March 17, 2025


CNN — A federal judge is demanding answers from the Trump administration after a Brown University assistant professor and doctor reportedly was deported over the weekend to Lebanon in defiance of a federal judge’s order. “The government shall respond to these serious allegations with a legal and factual response setting forth its version of events,” US District Judge Leo Sorokin, an Obama appointee, wrote in a Sunday order.

A hearing is set for Monday morning in Boston. Court records show a lawyer for Dr. Rasha Alawieh is requesting a delay; attorney Stephanie Marzouk declined Monday to comment to CNN. Alawieh’s reported expulsion came as Republican President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to sharply restrict border crossing and ramp up immigration arrests. It came less than a week after the detention of Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil, whose attempted deportation was put on hold by a judge.

Over the weekend, hundreds of immigrants with alleged gang ties were deported by the Trump administration, despite a judge’s order blocking their removal. The White House said the judge’s order came after the migrants, most from Venezuela, had left the US. The Brown physician, Alawieh, 34, was detained Thursday at Boston’s Logan International Airport, according to a federal complaint filed Friday by her cousin. A Lebanese citizen who was living in Rhode Island, she had been approved for an H-1B visa last year to work in the Division of Nephrology at Brown University’s medical school – after studying at three US universities since 2018 – the federal complaint states.

Alawieh in February went to Lebanon for what she thought would be a short visit but was delayed in returning while trying to get paperwork from the US Consulate in Beirut, the court document says. Her paperwork was approved March 11, but when Alawieh arrived at the Boston airport two days later, she was immediately detained and told she would be sent back to Lebanon the next day, according to the complaint, which her first cousin, Yara Chehab, told the court she filed because Customs and Border Protection would not give Alawieh access to attorneys.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/17/us/brown-university-doctor-deported-hnk/index.html