(18 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Providence, Rhode Island – 17 March 2025
1. Wide of protesters outside Rhode Island Statehouse UPSOUND:
"We want justice, you say how? We say justice, you say how. Bring back Rasha Alawieh now! Bring back Rasha Alawieh right now! (Repeated).
2. Wide of protest signs expressing support for Dr. Rasha Alawieh and Mahmoud Khalil
3. Wide of protesters listending to (off camera) speaker UPSOUND:
"But despite the Trump administration trying to terrify, silence and remove students and workers from the campuses and the streets, Despite them searching through immigrants phones for deleted pictures of political undesirables, we are here in the streets anyway! We are not cowering behind our phones. We are"
"not putting away our kaffiyas. And we are here right now. And we are here to stay. We’re going to stand up for our community, and we’re going to be as loud as possible when they’re under attack, because Rasha’s deportation is not an isolated incident. It is a part of a broader pattern of political repression against those who have a different position than the U.S. empire. Those who refuse to be complicit in genocide and will refuse to support US colonizing and cannibalizing the whole world!."
STORYLINE:
Protesters turned out at the Rhode Island Statehouse in Providence to show support for Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a doctor from Lebanon, who was sent back to that country after a federal judge ordered that she not be removed until a hearing could be held.
Government lawyers have said customs officials did not get word until after Alawieh was sent back to Lebanon.
It’s the latest deportation of a foreign-born person with a U.S. visa, after Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead protests of the Gaza war at Columbia University, was arrested and a doctoral student’s visa was revoked.
The Trump administration also transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations.
Homeland Security officials on Monday said that Alawieh “openly admitted” to supporting a Hezbollah leader and attending his funeral. The department’s statement, posted on social media, provides a possible explanation for the deportation, which has sparked widespread alarm, especially
Stephanie Marzouk, Alawieh’s lawyer, said she would not stop fighting to get the 34-year-old doctor back in the U.S., “to see her patients where she should be.”
Marzouk did not immediately return a request for comment surrounding Homeland Security’s allegations that Alawieh supported a Hezbollah leader.
The Justice Department has also detailed its reasons for deporting Alawieh in court filings, but a federal judge has sealed those documents.
News outlets that were able to obtain those records before they were sealed report that Alawieh had photos on her phone of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militant group for the past three decades. The Boston Globe reported that she also had pictures of Hezbollah “fighters and martyrs” on her phone.
Alawieh was granted the visa on March 11 and arrived at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday, according to a complaint filed on her behalf by a cousin in federal court.
Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist who previously worked and lived in Rhode Island, was detained at least 36 hours, the complaint said. She was to start work at Brown University as an assistant professor of medicine.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin issued an order Friday that an in-person hearing be scheduled Monday, with Alawieh brought to court.
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