One More Deportation Achieved: A Sympathizer with Hezbollah

While Mahmoud Khalil remains the cynosure of all pro-Hamas and left-wing eyes in this country, other supporters of Islamic terrorists have been successfully removed, sent back to their countries of origin with far less fuss.

Robert Spencer reported briefly about Rasha Alawieh here, and more on the latest deportee can be found here: “Brown U. assistant prof. deported, had photos ‘sympathetic’ to Hezbollah on phone, US says,” Reuters, March 17, 2025:

US authorities on Monday said they deported a Rhode Island doctor and assistant professor at Brown University to Lebanon last week after discovering “sympathetic photos and videos” of the former longtime leader of Hezbollah and militants in her cell phone’s deleted items folder.

Alawieh had also told agents that while in Lebanon she attended the funeral last month of Hezbollah’s slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, whom she supported from a “religious perspective” as a Shi’ite Muslim.

Of course. Everyone knows that Nasrallah was a deeply religious man. That was his reason for being. Threatening to destroy Israel, encouraging his followers to engage in terrorism, celebrating the Hezbollah “martyrs” who died while killing Jews, arranging for Iran to supply weapons and money to the terror group — all that was a mere sideline, about which Rasha Alawieh knew nothing. She supported Nasrallah, she tried to persuade the people from US Customs and Border Protection, only from a “religious perspective.” In the same way, presumably, that Arabs in Mandatory Palestine supported Hajj Amin el Husseini from a “religious perspective,” and Iranians today support Ayatollah Khamenei from a “religious perspective.” Let’s be serious, shall we?

The US Justice Department provided those details as it sought to assure a federal judge in Boston that US Customs and Border Protection did not willfully disobey an order he issued on Friday that should have halted Dr. Rasha Alawieh’s immediate removal.

The 34-year-old Lebanese citizen, who held an H-1B visa, was detained on Thursday at Logan International Airport in Boston after returning from a trip to Lebanon to see family. Her cousin then filed a lawsuit seeking to halt her deportation.

Explanation for removal

In its first public explanation for her removal, the Justice Department said Alawieh, a kidney specialist and assistant professor at Brown University, was denied re-entry to the United States based on what CBP found on her phone and statements she made during an airport interview.

“It’s a purely religious thing,” she said about the funeral, according to a transcript of that interview reviewed by Reuters. “He’s a very big figure in our community. For me it’s not political.”

At Nasrallah’s funeral, hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah members and supporters turned out at a stadium in Beirut to weep and wail and ululate and shout “Allahu Akbar” for their Fallen Leader. But what they mostly shouted, according to reports on the scene, was “Death to Israel, death to America, we respond to your call, Nasrallah.” Meanwhile, at this grand gathering of Hezbollah terrorists, four Israeli fighter jets swooped low over the crowds, reminding them of who ruled the skies over Lebanon. I wonder what photographs Rasha Alawieh took at the funeral, or what comments she made about Nasrallah, and Hezbollah, on her cell phone that she later erased, but that Homeland Security managed to retrieve. Words of praise for Nasrallah and Hezbollah, a hope expressed that Hezbollah would avenge his killing by “the Jews”? We know there were photos on her phone of both Nasrallah and Ayatollah Khamenei, another terrorist, that she tried, unsuccessfully, to remove from her phone. The men from Customs and Border Protection were able to retrieve those incriminating photographs and much more.

Western governments including the United States designate Hezbollah a terrorist group. The Lebanese militant group is part of the “Axis of Resistance,” an alliance of Iran-backed groups across the Middle East that also includes the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which sparked the Gaza war by attacking Israel almost a year ago on Oct. 7.

Based on those statements and the discovery of photos on her phone of Nasrallah and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, the Justice Department said CBP concluded “her true intentions in the United States could not be determined.”…

That means that Customs and Border Protection personnel could not be sure of what Alawieh might do if allowed to remain in the country. She was enough of a risk, as a fervent admirer of both Nasrallah and Khamenei, to be refused re-entry. Imagine a German citizen who had been working in America for several years, but had gone back for a few weeks to Germany to visit family and to attend a Nazi rally in Nuremberg. Arriving back in America, customs officials discover in her luggage a portfolio of photographs of Hitler, Hitler in Munich, Hitler at a rally in Nuremberg, Hitler taking the salute from 5,000 goose-stepping Wehrmacht soldiers. She claims the photographs were purely of “historical interest.” Wouldn’t it have been right for the CPB deny that person re-entry?

The judge on Sunday had directed the government to address “serious allegations” that his order was willfully violated ahead of a hearing that had been scheduled for Monday.

That hearing was canceled on Monday at the request of the cousin’s lone remaining attorney, after lawyers at the law firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer representing her pro bono withdrew, citing “further diligence” about the quickly-moving case….

Why did the pro bono lawyers from the prestigious firm of Arnold and Porter withdraw? They cited “further diligence,” which means they had looked more deeply into their would-be client and found out disturbingly more about Ms. Alawieh and her deep admiration for the terrorist Hassan Nasrallah. In other words, she wasn’t the innocent she had been presented as being.

The Justice Department’s filing was later sealed by Sorokin at the request of a lawyer for the cousin. Reuters reviewed it from a public terminal in the courthouse before access was further restricted.

Why would the cousin’s lawyer want the DoJ’s filing to be sealed? There is only one possible reason: it contained incriminating evidence against Rasha Alawieh and her deep admiration for Hassan Nasrallah that could not be explained away.

Now Rasha Alawieh has been sent back to Lebanon, where she can support to her heart’s content the goose-stepping bezonians of Hezbollah, and even visit the grave of Hassan Nasrallah. But she won’t be worrying us, in the country that had naively welcomed her, any more.