Rasha Alawieh

Rasha Alawieh is a Lebanese assistant professor at Brown University. She was denied re-entry to the United States in March 2025 and deported to Lebanon, despite having a H-1B visa. U.S. Department of Defense officials justified Alawieh's denial for re-entry after "sympathetic photos and videos" of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and Hezbollah militants were found "in her cell phone's deleted items folder", and may have been emailed by Alawieh from her phone.

A court order temporarily blocking her removal from Massachusetts was issued, but the government said that officers did not receive it until after her plane had departed. Some of the court documents remain sealed.

A U.S. Homeland Security spokeswoman said that upon being questioned Alawieh “openly admitted” her support for Nasrallah.

Biography Rasha Alawieh was born in 1990. She is a Lebanese transplant nephrologist who had worked as an assistant professor at Brown University.

Alawieh obtained her medical degree from the American University of Beirut in 2015 and completed her residency at the AUB Medical Center in 2018. That year, she obtained a J-1 visa She completed the Yale Waterbury Internal Medicine Program in June 2024, the same month the United States government approved Alawieh's petition for an H-1B visa, sponsored by Brown Medicine. Hezbollah has been deemed a designated terrorist organization by the United States Department of State. On March 14, 2025, Alawieh had returned to the U.S. on a flight landing at Logan International Airport in Boston. She was detained at the airport. Alawieh admitted during questioning that she had sent some images of Hezbollah members.

That same day, her cousin, Yara Chehab, filed a petition alleging that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was unlawfully detaining Alawieh "without any justification and without permitting them access to their counsel" for at least 36 hours after traveling to Lebanon to see relatives.

That evening, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin issued orders barring Alawieh's removal from Massachusetts without 48 hours notice to the court and scheduling for her to be brought to a hearing on March 17. Alawieh's attorney said that in violation of this order she was sent on a flight to Paris and was back in Lebanon on March 16.

Brown University advised all of its international community members to postpone travel, saying it was waiting for additional information from the US Department of State.

The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, called on the Trump administration to readmit Alawieh, stating "Deporting lawful immigrants like Dr. Alawieh without any basis undermines the rule of law and reinforces suspicion that our immigration system is turning into an anti-Muslim, white supremacist institution that seeks to expel and turn away as many Muslims and people of color as possible".