Valid Visa, Court Order. Deported Anyway.

The Rule of Law No Longer Matters

Professor Rasha Alawieh, age 34, is a professor at Brown University’s medical school. She is a specialist in kidney transplantation. She holds a valid visa and a court order that was supposed to block her expulsion, but none of that mattered.

The Trump administration’s Border Protection appears to have willfully defied the court order and all legal measures as they detained Dr. Alawieh on Thursday, and put her on a flight to Paris, presumably a step toward returning her to her home country of Lebanon. She had just returned to the US from a visit to her family last month.

Judge Leo T. Sorokin had ordered the federal government to provide the court with 48 hours’ notice before deporting professor Alawieh, but they did not. They also gave no reason for her detainment or deportation, and Lebanon is not part of the draft list of countries which will comprise the new, revised Trump travel ban.

Alawieh was detained and held at Boston’s Logan airport for some 36 hours. Despite the Customs and Border Protection officials being notified that there was a court order in place barring Dr. Alawieh’s expulsion, the officers took no steps to stop their process, and instead put Dr. Alawieh on the plane to Paris as planned.