National News Brown University professor is deported despite a judge’s order Earlier this month, immigration authorities reportedly arrested Fabian Schmidt, a 34-year-old German national with a green card, at Boston Logan International Airport. Passers-by walk past Sayles Hall on the campus of Brown University, in Providence, R.I., May 7, 2012. AP Photo/Steven Senne, File
A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported from the United States, even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion, according to her lawyer and court papers.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is a Lebanese citizen who had traveled to her home country last month to visit relatives. She was detained Thursday when she returned from that trip to the United States, according to a court complaint filed by her cousin Yara Chehab.
Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts ordered the government Friday evening to provide the court with 48 hours’ notice before deporting Alawieh. But she was put on a flight to Paris, presumably on her way to Lebanon.
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In a second order filed Sunday morning, Sorokin said there was reason to believe U.S. Customs and Border Protection had willfully disobeyed his previous order to give the court notice before expelling the doctor. He said he had followed “common practice in this district as it has been for years,” and ordered the federal agency to respond to what he called “serious allegations.”
Customs and Border Protection did not respond Sunday to questions from The New York Times about why Alawieh had been detained and deported. Lebanon is not included on a draft list of nations from which the Trump administration is considering banning entry to the United States.
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A hearing in Alawieh’s case is scheduled for Monday.
Court documents related to the case were provided to the Times by Clare Saunders, a member of the legal team representing Chehab, who filed petitions to prevent her cousin’s deportation, and then to request that her cousin be allowed to return to the United States.
Chehab’s petitions name several members of the Trump administration as defendants, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Peter Flores.
Thomas Brown, a lawyer representing Alawieh and her employer, Brown Medicine, said that while the doctor was in Lebanon, the U.S. Consulate issued her an H-1B visa, which allows highly skilled foreign citizens to live and work in the United States. Brown Medicine, a nonprofit medical practice, had sponsored her application for the visa.
According to Chehab’s complaint, when Alawieh landed at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday, she was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers and held at the airport for 36 hours, for reasons that are unclear.
Saunders said in an affidavit that she went to the airport Friday and notified Customs and Border Protection officials there — before the flight to Paris was scheduled to depart — that there was a court order barring the doctor’s expulsion. She said the officers took no action and gave her no information until after the plane had taken off.
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Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2015. Three years later, she came to the United States, where she held medical fellowships at the Ohio State University and the University of Washington, and then worked as a resident at Yale University.
Before the new visa was issued, she held a J-1 visa, the type commonly used by foreign students.
There is a shortage of American doctors working in Alawieh’s area of specialty, transplant nephrology. Foreign-born physicians play an important role in the field, according to experts.
Fear over immigration status could “harm the pipeline even more,” said Dr. George Bayliss, who works in the Brown Medicine kidney transplant program with Alawieh.
Her patients included individuals awaiting transplants and those dealing with the complex conditions that can occur after a transplant, Bayliss said. He called Alawieh “a very talented, very thoughtful physician.”
“We are all outraged,” he added, “and none of us know why this happened.”
In a Sunday letter to members of the university community, Brown’s administration advised foreign students, before spring break, to “consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the U.S. Department of State.”
Green card holder arrested at Logan
Earlier this month, immigration authorities reportedly arrested Fabian Schmidt, a 34-year-old German national with a green card, at Boston Logan International Airport.
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Schmidt, of New Hampshire, was born in Germany, but has lived in the U.S. since he was a teenager, his family told The Boston Globe.
Since his arrest on March 7, he has been held at Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, Rhode Island, the Globe reported.
Among those seeking answers about his arrest is his mother, who emphasized that he’s a legal permanent resident and told the newspaper, “It’s unbelievable what’s happening now.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Heather Alterisio of Boston.com contributed to this story.
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