“Alawieh, who graduated from medical school in Lebanon, first came to the United States in 2018 to start a fellowship at Ohio State University. She later began working as a kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school and obtained an H-1B visa.
According to CNN, Alawieh’s immigration issues first began last month, when she traveled to Lebanon, and her visa to renter the United States was delayed due to increased security vetting of Lebanese travelers. The DHS posted on X that Alawieh had attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah who was assassinated by Israeli forces last year. “Alawieh openly admitted to this to CBP officers, as well as her support of Nasrallah,” the post reads.
It’s unclear why Alawieh was stopped by border officials when she arrived in Boston last Friday. A court filing obtained by Boston local news station WCVB states that Alawieh was found with photos of Nasrallah on her phone—though, again, it’s not clear why her phone was being searched in the first place.
“In explaining why these multiple photos were deleted by her one to two days before she arrived at Logan Airport, Dr. Alawieh stated that she did not want to give authorities the perception that she supports Hezbollah and the Ayatollah politically or militarily,” the filing read.
According to the document, Alawieh explained “I think if you listen to one of his sermons, you would know what I mean. He is a religious, spiritual person. As I said, he has very high value. His teachings are about spirituality and morality.””
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“”This administration is not going tolerate individuals having the privilege of studying in our country and then siding with pro-terrorist organizations that have killed Americans,” Leavitt said last week. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for siding with terrorists, period.””
“The Trump administration could be gearing up for broader warrantless immigration enforcement. Lawyers for the administration “have determined that an 18th-century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant,” The New York Times reported on Thursday, which would effectively set “aside a key provision of the Fourth Amendment that requires a court order to search someone’s home.”
The “18th-century wartime law” in question is the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which gives the president broad authority to detain and deport noncitizens during times of war. Trump invoked the law earlier this month to justify deporting alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. Members of the gang had “unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare” against Americans, Trump explained in an executive order.
“All such Alien Enemies, wherever found within any territory subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, are subject to summary apprehension,” the order continued. Senior Justice Department lawyers believe that language and the Alien Enemies Act’s historic applications mean “the government does not need a warrant to enter a home or premises to search for people believed to be members of that gang,” the Times reported.
The administration should think twice about acting on that interpretation, given the fallout over last weekend’s Alien Enemies Act–related deportations. An ICE official’s sworn affidavit “paint[ed] the picture of a Trump administration and ICE management that were determined to deport as many people as possible, no matter how tenuous the connection to Tren de Aragua or any crime,” wrote Reason’s Eric Boehm. Reports on the deportees suggest that many may have been sent to a Salvadoran prison for extremely flimsy reasons, including innocuous tattoos. It would’ve been far better for the government to assess those grounds for deportation in court hearings rather than whisking people out of the country and potentially making grave, life-altering mistakes.”
“Until Trump took office in January, the AEA had been invoked only three times in 226 years: during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. All of those situations fell into the “declared war” category. The AEA has never previously been invoked in response to a putative “invasion or predatory incursion” outside the context of a declared war. That is the threat Trump cites to justify peremptorily deporting suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.”
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“Trump does not claim to be at war with Venezuela. Nor does he claim that the Venezuelan government has mounted an “invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” And a criminal organization, even one that has corrupted or “infiltrated” a foreign government, is not a “hostile nation or government” as those terms are ordinarily understood.
Nor does Trump’s understanding of “invasion or predatory incursion” make sense in the context of the AEA. “As the Supreme Court and past presidents have acknowledged, the Alien Enemies Act is a wartime authority enacted and implemented under the war power,” Katherine Yon Ebright, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice who specializes in national security issues, explained last fall. “When the Fifth Congress passed the law and the Wilson administration defended it in court during World War I, they did so on the understanding that noncitizens with connections to a foreign belligerent could be ‘treated as prisoners of war’ under the ‘rules of war under the law of nations.’ In the Constitution and other late-1700s statutes, the term invasion is used literally, typically to refer to large-scale attacks. The term predatory incursion is also used literally in writings of that period to refer to slightly smaller attacks like the 1781 Raid on Richmond led by American defector Benedict Arnold.””
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“”There is a lot of law about what constitutes a foreign government,” Gelernt told Boasberg. “And I don’t think the United States recognizes [Tren de Aragua] as a foreign government. They recognize Venezuela as a foreign government. I think that’s the
historic understanding of the statute.”
Gerlent also questioned the government’s definition of “invasion or predatory incursion”: “We think the Court certainly can review whether immigration constitutes some kind of invasion….We know of no historical precedent that would suggest that straight migration or noncitizens coming and committing crimes constitutes an invasion within the meaning of the statute or the Constitution.””
“Does it matter that Khalil is not a U.S. citizen? In the 1945 case Bridges v. Wixon, the Supreme Court held that “freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.” That case involved a longtime legal resident from Australia who was deemed deportable based on the allegation that he had been affiliated with the Communist Party.
“Once an alien lawfully enters and resides in this country, he becomes invested with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all people within our borders,” Justice Frank Murphy wrote in a concurring opinion. “Such rights include those protected by the First and the Fifth Amendments and by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. None of these provisions acknowledges any distinction between citizens and resident aliens.””
“Claiming vast executive powers and “the mandate of the electorate,” the Justice Department on Monday night informed a federal judge that it was invoking the state secrets privilege and refusing to answer a judge’s orders for more information on several deportation flights of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and other high-ranking Justice Department officials filed a “Notice Invoking State Secrets Privilege” claiming that it “would pose reasonable danger to national security and foreign affairs” to comply with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s fact-finding inquiries to determine if the U.S. government violated his order to turn those deportation flights around.”
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“Boasberg has repeatedly ordered the Justice Department to produce detailed information on those flights to determine if officials knowingly defied his orders. The Trump administration has offered various explanations for why it did not comply—that it didn’t consider Boasberg’s verbal order valid, and that Boasberg didn’t have jurisdiction once the flights crossed into international space, for instance.
As Boasberg’s fact-finding orders have proceeded toward considering contempt, the Justice Department’s responses have grown more obstinate, culminating in Monday night’s invocation of the state secrets privilege.”
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“the Trump administration is claiming that it can declare a war by executive order and send immigrants to a labor camp in another country, all without meaningful judicial review of the facts. As Ilya Somin recently wrote at The Volokh Conspiracy, the Trump administration’s policy violates the Due Process Clause of the Constitution and is “obviously unjust.”
“Imprisoning people without any due process whatsoever is a cruel and evil practice usually used only by authoritarian states,” Somin wrote. “And if the Trump administration gets away with it here, there is an obvious danger it will expand the practice.”
The Trump administration’s attempt to invoke the state secrets privilege raises another, tertiary danger: that we won’t even be able to know if they’re expanding the practice.”
“the First Amendment is understood as a general restriction on the government’s behavior, as The Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin points out.
“The First Amendment’s protection for freedom of speech, like most constitutional rights, is not limited to US citizens,” he writes. “The text of the First Amendment is worded as a general limitation on government power, not a form of special protection for a particular group of people, such as US citizens or permanent residents.”
Setting aside the constitutional issue, the detention of a student activist for engaging in what would clearly be considered First Amendment–protected activity under other circumstances is very alarming. If the State Department wishes to proceed with this course of action, the burden is on the government to sufficiently explain why Khalil should be deported. Authorities must persuasively demonstrate that his conduct crosses some very, very red line.
Yet, at present, the government’s justifications don’t come anywhere close to satisfying such a requirement. On the contrary, the official explanation for Khalil’s detention is so woefully insufficient as to be laughable—except, of course, this matter isn’t funny at all.”
“The administration maintains that it has the power to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him because he helped lead pro-Palestinian protests. Indeed, it’s becoming clear that Khalil was targeted because of his speech, rather than any other conduct that might be reasonably construed as criminal behavior.”
“A Rhode Island doctor who is an assistant professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported to Lebanon even though a judge had issued an order blocking the U.S. visa holder’s immediate removal from the country, according to court papers.
The expulsion of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is set to be the focus of a hearing on Monday before a federal judge in Boston, who on Sunday demanded information on whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection had “willfully” disobeyed his order.”
“The flights suggest the Trump administration may be growing more brazen in its defiance of judicial restraint. The U.S. Constitution established the judiciary as a co-equal and independent branch of government.
Trump has sought to push the boundaries of executive power since taking office in January, cutting spending authorized by Congress, dismantling agencies and firing tens of thousands of federal workers.”
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“On Monday, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, said the flights were already in international airspace when the judge’s orders came and that more flights would continue.
“Once you’re outside the border, you know, it is what it is. But they’re in international waters, already on the way south, close to landing. You know what? … We did what we had to do,” he told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” program.
Asked what was next, Homan said: “Another flight, another flight every day.”
“We’re not stopping. I don’t care what the judges think,” he added.”