White House’s ‘bye-bye Rasha’ post as Brown University doctor deported to Lebanon
US authorities on Monday said they deported Rasha Alawieh, a Rhode Island doctor who is an assistant professor at Brown University’s medical school, to Lebanon last week after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hassan Nasrallah, a former longtime leader of Hezbollah, and militants in her cell phone’s deleted items folder.
Re-sharing a post on X from the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, the White House, wrote “Bye-bye Rasha” and then added a photo of a waving Donald Trump from a drive-thru window, in response to the deportation of the Lebanese doctor.
Dr Rasha Alawieh had also told agents that while in Lebanon she attended the funeral last month of Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective” as a Shia Muslim.
The US Department of Justice provided those details as it sought to assure a federal judge in Boston that US Customs and Border Protection did not willfully disobey an order he issued on Friday that should have halted Alawieh’s immediate removal.
Who is Rasha Alawieh?
Rasha Alawieh, a 34-year-old Lebanese citizen who held an H-1B visa, was detained on Thursday at Logan International Airport in Boston after returning from a trip to Lebanon to see family.
Alawiech, who had worked and lived in Rhode Island previously, was detained at least 36 hours, through Friday, a complaint said.
Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist, was to start work at Brown University as an assistant professor of medicine.
Alawich had worked at Brown prior to the issuance of her H-1B visa, the complaint said. It said she has held fellowships and residencies at three universities in the United States.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin issued an order on Friday that an in-person hearing be scheduled Monday, with Alawiech brought to court.
But by Saturday, the cousin filed a motion that customs officials “willfully” disobeyed the order by sending Alawiech back to Lebanon.
Rasha Alawieh’s deportation came as US President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to sharply restrict border crossings and ramp up immigration arrests.
What the Justice Department said
In its first public explanation for her removal, the Justice Department said Alawieh was denied re-entry to the United States based on what CBP found on her phone and statements she made during an airport interview.
“I’m not a political person,” she said. “I’m a physician. It’s mainly about faith.”
Western governments, including the United States, designate Hezbollah a terrorist group. The Lebanese militant group is part of the “Axis of Resistance”, an alliance of Iran-backed groups across the Middle East that also includes the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which sparked the Gaza war by attacking Israel 17 months ago.
Based on those statements and the discovery of photos on her phone of Nasrallah and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, the Justice Department said CBP concluded “her true intentions in the United States could not be determined.”
