PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island doctor has been deported after returning from a trip to Lebanon to visit her parents.
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening. She has since been placed on a plane headed to Paris.
Dr. Rasha, who resided in Providence, had been employed at Brown Medicine since last July. She has been studying and working in the United States for approximately six years.
The U.S. consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is granted to individuals in specialized occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, according to her attorney, Thomas S. Brown.
According to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director, a lawyer filed a petition with the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order stating Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. However, he indicated that this message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh departed for Paris.
“This is outrageous,” Bayliss stated in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is being prevented from re-entering the country for unknown reasons. It’s depriving her patients of a valuable physician.”
