The family of a doctor, who’s an assistant professor at Brown University, is pushing back against the woman’s deportation to Lebanon, saying she was detained at a Boston airport for more than a day and sent out of the U.S. in violation of a federal court order.

According to her family’s legal counsel, Dr. Rasha Alawieh had a legitimate work visa authorizing her entry into the United States when she was held by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the Boston Logan International Airport until her deportation the evening of March 14.

After a federal judge ordered the government to respond to the accusation that CBP disobeyed a court order by deporting Alawieh, lawyers from the Justice Department denied the accusation the morning of March 17, court records show.

The Department of Homeland Security then said on X, formerly Twitter, that Alawieh had recently attended the funeral for a Hezbollah leader, a “brutal terrorist.”

“Last month, Rasha Alawieh traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah,” DHS said in the March 17 statement, adding that Nasrallah is “responsible for killing hundreds of Americans.”

An attorney for Alawieh’s family didn’t immediately respond to McClatchy News’ inquiry asking whether Alawieh attended the funeral.

The Boston Globe reports Alawieh, 34, went to Lebanon to visit her parents before she returned to the U.S. the morning of March 13. As a kidney transplant doctor, she teaches at Brown Medicine and also worked at Rhode Island Hospital, the newspaper reported.

While she was detained by CBP, prosecutors wrote in court filings that Alawieh had photos of the Hezbollah leader on her phone and images of Hezbollah “fighters and martyrs,” according to court documents reviewed by the Boston Globe.

“According to Dr. Alawieh, she follows him for his religious and spiritual teachings and not his politics,” prosecutors wrote in the court documents, according to the newspaper.

What the government said about the court order

The complaint over Alawieh’s deportation was brought against Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CBP Commissioner Peter R. Flores, and the field director of CBP’s Boston Field Office on March 14, court records show.

It was filed by Alawieh’s cousin, The New York Times reported.

After filing, the court ordered that the doctor wasn’t to be removed from the U.S. without 48 hours’ notice, according to Judge Leo T. Sorokin, of the District of Massachusetts.

Immigration attorney Patrick Taurel, of Grossman Young & Hammond, told McClatchy News on March 17 that “it is very rare, albeit not entirely unprecedented, for individuals to be removed when there are court orders staying their removal.”

“But, to my knowledge, such removals are ordinarily the result of a lack of coordination within the federal government and not the purposeful flouting of a court order the government has actual knowledge of,” Taurel, who litigates federal immigration cases, said.

Alawieh’s cousin’s legal counsel contended CBP “willfully” disobeyed the court order, court records show.

The government’s lawyers said Alawieh was sent out of the U.S. before CBP learned of the judge’s order, according to court records.

“(A)t no time would CBP not take a court order seriously or fail to abide by a court’s order,” the government explained, court records show.

Following the government’s response, some of the lawyers representing Alawieh’s cousin withdrew from the case, according to court records.

Before withdrawing, one of the lawyers, Clare Saunders, had contended that she told CBP officers about the judge’s order at Logan airport, before Alawieh was sent to Lebanon, according to the New York Times.

Stephanie E.Y. Marzouk is the remaining lawyer for Alawieh’s cousin.

What visa did the doctor have?

Alawieh had an H1-B visa, which was issued to her by the U.S. embassy when she was seeing her family in Lebanon, according to the New York Times.

This visa is given to individuals who work a specialized job in connection with a Department of Defense related research or project, or in an area “of distinguished merit or ability,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Dr. Susie Hu, head of Brown Medicine’s kidney disease and hypertension division, told the Boston Globe that Alawieh is “highly competent, highly regarded.”

Hu said she was “surprised” at what the government said about her, but added that she doesn’t understand why Alawieh can’t continue working in the U.S., based on what CBP said was found on her phone, according to the newspaper.

Taurel told McClatchy News that it’s possible CBP revoked her visa, “perhaps based on a search of her electronic device and/or representations she might have made during an interview with a CBP officer during secondary inspection.”

‘Testing the bounds of executive power’

In reaction to the initial reports of Alawieh’s deportation, Taurel said, “There are strong indications that this is the weekend that the rule of law collapsed when it comes to immigration enforcement.”

He noted how the Trump administration sent hundreds of migrants to El Salvador, despite an order from a federal judge, who temporarily banned deporting them, as detailed by The Associated Press and other news outlets.

Taurel said the order was seemingly violated because the government refused “to turn airplanes around containing Venezuelan migrants who had been given no legal process whatsoever and who are now being detained in a Salvadoran maximum security prison notorious for human rights violations.”

Elora Mukherjee, the Jerome L. Greene Clinical Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and director of the university’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, told McClatchy News that “this administration is testing the bounds of executive power, especially in the immigration context.”

According to The Associated Press, Marzouk said she’s working to secure Alawieh’s return to the U.S., as she currently has patients.

A hearing over her deportation was scheduled for 10 a.m. on March 17, before it was canceled after Marzouk requested for a continuance in connection with her co-counsel withdrawing, records show.

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