EDITORS' CORNER
Professor deported after attending Hezbollah leader’s funeral
A federal appeals court recently upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss a lawsuit contesting the deportation of Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor of medicine with alleged ties to Muslim terrorists.
“Because Congress, in the Immigration and Naturalization Act, has barred judicial review of such orders, and Alawieh does not fit within the statutory exception, we lack jurisdiction to review her claims,” Judge Sandra Lynch wrote.
The U.S. Department of Justice deported the professor after her alleged terror ties sparked mixed reactions from academics online in March 2025, The College Fix previously reported.
Alawieh was deported at Logan Airport in Boston while returning from a visit to her home country of Lebanon. Department officials said customs authorities discovered “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah leaders in a deleted folder on her cell phone.
Further, Alawieh told customs authorities that she had attended Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral while there, and “supported him ‘from a religious perspective’ but not a political one,” Politico reported.
Attorneys representing Alawieh filed a lawsuit in May 2025, alleging that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol did not have the authority to remove Alawieh and expedite the deportation process, according to the Brown Daily Herald.
The lawsuit stated that the professor has “due process rights that render the application of expedited removal to her unlawful.”
“Alawieh’s experience exemplifies why permitting non-appointed employees to make life-altering decisions, insulated from any review, is inconsistent with our constitutional system,” it stated.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin dismissed the lawsuit in October 2025, stating, “The relief Alawieh seeks in this action is beyond what this court can provide.”
At the time, Brown medical school Professor George Bayliss said faculty at the school were “outraged at Dr. Alawieh’s detention and deportation without due process,” according to The Brown Daily Herald.
“Beyond the affront to democracy, this is wrong on a personal level. She went home to see her parents,” he told the student newspaper. “This deprives her of the chance to practice medicine and deprives her patients of her knowledge and skills.”
However, political commentator and media host David Harris Jr. commended the appeals court’s decision in a post on X.
“Hezbollah is a strictly designated foreign terrorist organization responsible for the bloodshed of Americans and our allies. If you mourn and praise violent terrorists, you have zero business stepping foot in our country!” he wrote.
“National security starts at the border, and foreign nationals who support designated terror groups should be sent packing immediately,” Harris added.
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