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Brown University has warned international staff and students to reconsider foreign travel after one of its assistant professors was deported to Lebanon.
In a campus-wide email, Russell Carey, Brown’s executive vice president for planning and policy, encouraged those intending to travel outside the U.S. to wait until more information was available from the State Department.
The advice comes after Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor on an H-1B visa, was detained after returning from a trip to Lebanon before being deported over the weekend.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we encourage international students, staff, faculty and scholars — including U.S. visa holders and permanent residents (or ‘green card holders’) — to consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the U.S. Department of State,” Carey’s message said, The Hill reported.
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It added that “during this period of great uncertainty, we feel it’s imperative to share reminders with Brown’s international community about travel outside the United States and to provide information about available campus resources.”
Alawieh was deported despite a court order from a judge saying she was to stay in the country. The federal government argued that agents from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had not been made aware of the order before the doctor was already out of the country.
“We continue to seek to learn more about what has happened,” Brown University said in a statement to The Hill, noting Alawieh was an employee of Brown Medicine with a clinical appointment to Brown University.
Alawieh was detained at Boston’s Logan Airport on Thursday after returning from a trip visiting family in Lebanon. CBP officers searched her phone and would not immediately admit her to the U.S., according to court documents.
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Government lawyers claimed she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah while she was in Lebanon and supported him “from a religious perspective” and claimed to have discovered “sympathetic photos and videos” on her phone.
Alawieh “openly admitted this to CBP officers, as well as her support of [Hassan] Nasrallah,” the lawyers said.
Alawieh’s deportation comes after pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder who graduated from Columbia University in December, was detained. Donald Trump has continued to use the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly remove targets as part of his anti-immigration agenda.
