An assistant professor at Brown University was deported to Lebanon last weekend after she traveled abroad to attend the funeral of former Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and reportedly expressed praise for the slain terrorist leader, referring to him as a “spiritual person.”
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is a Lebanese citizen and kidney doctor who worked as an assistant professor of medicine at the Rhode Island-based Ivy League research university.
In response to an inquiry from The Christian Post, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed that Alawieh’s removal was prompted by her attending Nasrallah’s funeral in Beirut, Lebanon, last month.
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The agency described Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year, as a “brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree.”
“Alawieh openly admitted to this to CBP officers, as well as her support of Nasrallah,” a spokesperson for the DHS told CP.
“A visa is a privilege not a right — glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied,” the agency spokesperson added. “This is commonsense security.”
Alawieh arrived at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday after returning from Lebanon, according to a Friday complaint filed by the woman’s cousin, Yara Chehab, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. She was granted an H1B visa on March 11 and had previously lived in the U.S.
According to court filings obtained by WCVB, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at Logan questioned Alawieh about the photos of Nasrallah that she had on her phone.
“In explaining why these multiple photos were deleted by her one to two days before she arrived at Logan Airport, Dr. Alawieh stated that she did not want to give authorities the perception that she supports Hezbollah and the Ayatollah politically or militarily,” the paperwork stated.
Alawieh also allegedly encouraged customs officials to listen to Nasrallah’s sermons, according to the report. The Brown University employee reportedly described the Hezbollah leader as “a religious, spiritual person” of “very high value,” claiming that Nasrallah’s “teachings are about spirituality and morality.”
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin, an appointee of President Barack Obama, issued an order that barred Alawieh’s removal from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice to the court, as CNN reported.
However, Alawieh was deported anyway, as customs officials had not been made aware of the judge’s order until after her departure from the U.S., according to lawyers for the government. The judge has since put the assistant professor’s case on hold.
In response to the deportation of its employee, Brown University sent a campus-wide email this week to international staffers and students, advising them against traveling outside of the U.S.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we encourage international students, staff, faculty and scholars — including U.S. visa holders and permanent residents (or ‘green card holders’) — to consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the U.S. Department of State,” Russell Carey, Brown’s executive vice president for planning and policy, wrote in the email.
Brown University did not immediately respond to The Christian Post’s request for comment.
The deportation case of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil has also made headlines this month. Khalil, a green card holder from Syria, was detained and faces possible deportation for his role in organizing anti-Israel protests.
Anti-Israel activists on college campuses throughout the country last year set up protest encampments and organized demonstrations in opposition to Israel’s military response to Hamas’ terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Jewish students at various academic institutions, including Columbia University, reported that they experienced antisemitic harassment from the protesters.
Canary Mission, a group that works to expose antisemitism, shared a video to its social media page on March 6 that showed Khalil among the activists who took over a library at Barnard College, a Columbia affiliate.
Activists at the protest handed out pamphlets from the “Hamas Media Office” that reportedly justified the terror group’s 2023 invasion in southern Israel, which resulted in the massacres of over 1,200 people in southern Israel and sparked Israel’s military operation in Gaza.
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
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