US / Brown University Brown University Professor's Deportation Causes Ruckus Dr. Rasha Alawieh appears to have been sent back to Lebanon despite a court order By John Johnson Posted Mar 17, 2025 12:10 PM CDT Copied Pedestrians make their way past a building housing the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, R.I., in this file photo. Dr. Rasha Alawieh works there. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott, File) The mass deportation of alleged gang members isn't the only such controversy in the news. A second involves a 34-year-old kidney transplant specialist who is also a medical professor at Brown University. Coverage: Who: Dr. Rasha Alawieh is a native of Lebanon who has been in the US with a valid visa since 2018, reports Reuters. She was detained at Boston's Logan International Airport on Thursday as she returned from a trip to Lebanon. Deportation: Her family quickly filed a lawsuit, and a federal judge ordered the US on Friday not to deport her without giving the court two days' notice, per the New York Times. However, Alawieh was then put on a plane to Paris, which was presumed to be the first leg of a trip back to Lebanon. Her attorneys call that a willful disregard of the court order, but the Customs and Border Patrol agency says it never received notice of the order, per the Hill. Photo allegations: On Monday, federal authorities told the court that CPB agents found "sympathetic photos and videos" of figures in Hezbollah on her phone at Logan, reports Politico. She reportedly told CPB agents that she had attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and backed him "from a religious perspective," though not a political one. The US considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Hearing canceled: "CBP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that her true intentions in the United States could not be determined," wrote Assistant US Attorney Michael Sady in a court filing. A court hearing on Alawieh's case had been scheduled for Monday, but US District Judge Leo Sorokin postponed it for a week. Her work: Alawieh worked in what's known as transplant nephrology, and she held a visa granted to foreigners in specialized fields, per the Guardian. She previously held medical fellowships at Ohio State University and the University of Washington, and she worked as a resident at Yale. (More Brown University stories.) Report an error