U.S. immigration authorities deported Brown University medical professor Dr. Rasha Alawieh despite her valid visa and a judge’s order halting her removal.
Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen and kidney transplant specialist, was detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday while returning from a trip to visit her parents in Lebanon, according to a court complaint filed by her cousin Yara Chehab, which was reported by the New York Times on Sunday.
Though federal Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued a Friday night order directing the government to give courts 48 hours notice before deporting Alawieh, she was still placed on a flight to Paris, where she was again detained on Saturday.
In an affidavit reviewed by the Times, Claire Saunders, a member of the legal representing Chehab, said that she notified U.S. Customs and Border Protection of the court order on Friday before the flight was scheduled to depart but that officers did not act on the information.
In response to the government’s apparent defiance of Sorokin’s directive, the judge filed a second order on Sunday morning. In it, he said there was ground to believe authorities had “willfully” disobeyed his initial order, and he asked the government to respond to the “serious allegations” by Monday.
In response to an inquiry about Alawieh’s detention and deportation, Hilton Beckham, the Assistant Commissioner of Public Affairs for Customs and Border Protection, told HuffPost that “arriving aliens bear the burden of establishing admissibility to the United States.”
“Our CBP Officers adhere to strict protocols to identify and stop threats, using rigorous screening, vetting, strong law enforcement partnerships, and keen inspectional skills to keep threats out of the country,” his statement continued. “CBP is committed to protecting the United States from national security threats.”
The attorney representing Alawieh and Brown Medicine, Thomas S. Brown, told The New Arab he did not understand why his client was detained and deported.
“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”
According to a habeas corpus petition filed on behalf of Alawieh on Friday, she had been issued a valid H-1B visa earlier this month after applying with the sponsorship of her employer, Brown Medicine.
H-1B visas allow foreign citizens with specialized skills to live and work in the U.S. Recently, the program has sparked a contentious debate among conservatives who see them as a way to support the economy and those who want to clamp down on immigration.
Alawieh had previously lived and worked in the U.S. for six years under a J-1 visa, which is issued to students, educators, or those conducting research.
Alawieh’s deportation comes as the Trump administration attempts to accelerate its mass deportation plans in multiple ways.
On Saturday, the president invoked a seldom-used wartime authority known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to justify deporting hundreds of Venezuelans accused of being gang members.
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Earlier in the week, Trump promised to ramp up deportations of foreign-born political activists following the highly-publicized detention of Columbia University graduate and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, who was a central figure in the pro-Palestinian protests that took hold of his New York campus last spring.