The United States government has deported Rasha Alawieh, a medical doctor detained last Thursday in Boston after visiting family in Lebanon.
Alawieh, a Rhode Island transplant doctor and assistant professor at Brown University, trained at both the University of Washington and Yale University.
On Monday, a federal judge canceled a hearing on whether the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) disobeyed his order to keep Alawieh in the US amid the litigation.
But government lawyers said the doctor “had already departed the United States” by the time CBP officers at Boston’s Logan Airport received Judge Leo Sorokin’s instruction.
In a statement on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Alawieh informed CBP officers that she was in Beirut to attend the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The DHS noted a visa “is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is commonsense security.”
Court documents filed by the government stated that Alawieh was questioned by a CBP officer about photos on her phone that appeared to show Hezbollah fighters.
The doctor was said to have explained that the images were shared within WhatsApp messaging groups of friends and family.