A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Dr. Rasha Alawieh, the former Brown Medicine kidney transplant specialist deported to Lebanon last year after border officers found images of Hezbollah's late leader and Iran's supreme leader on her phone. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled Tuesday that it lacks jurisdiction to even review her claims, closing off a legal fight that has drawn attention from civil rights groups and Rhode Island's medical community alike.
The ruling, issued October 13 by a three-judge panel, backed U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin's earlier dismissal of Alawieh's case in Boston, according to The Boston Globe. Judges Sandra L. Lynch, Gustavo A. Gelpí, and Seth A. Dunlap heard the appeal, with Lynch authoring the court's opinion, according to FindLaw. The panel did not weigh in on whether Customs and Border Protection officers acted properly when they detained and removed Alawieh — only that federal courts have no authority to decide that question in the first place.
That jurisdictional bar comes from the Immigration and Nationality Act itself. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2) and § 1252(e)(1), federal courts are statutorily barred from reviewing expedited removal orders issued to arriving noncitizens, according to the Legal Information Institute, leaving judges without power to second-guess administrative decisions made at ports of entry. The same bar is why the First Circuit declined to consider the constitutional arguments her lawyers raised, according to the Globe's reporting.
What Happened at Logan Airport
Alawieh returned to the United States from Lebanon on March 13, 2025, after a trip to visit family the previous month. Customs and Border Protection officers searched her cellphone at Boston Logan International Airport and found photos and videos of Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's late longtime leader, along with images of Hezbollah members and Ali Khamenei, Iran's leader at the time, according to the facts underlying the case as reported by the Globe.
Alawieh said she knew Hezbollah was designated a terrorist organization by the United States, a designation dating to 1997, and she denied supporting the group. She said she admired Nasrallah's religious and spiritual teachings and that she and her family had attended a commemoration of his death during their Lebanon trip. She also said she did not fear persecution in Lebanon. A Customs and Border Protection officer served her with an expedited removal order and revoked her H-1B visa.
Federal court records show CBP officers formally declared Alawieh inadmissible under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(7)(A)(i)(I), citing what they called derogatory information found during inspection that they said prevented verification of her entry intentions, according to Justia Law. CBP's border-search authority includes manual basic searches of electronic devices, and the agency reported searching the devices of fewer than 0.01 percent of arriving international travelers in fiscal year 2025, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
A Last-Minute Legal Scramble
Alawieh's cousin filed a habeas corpus petition just one hour before she was placed on a flight to Lebanon via Paris on March 14, 2025. Her attorney notified border officers at Logan about the habeas case that same day, and Judge Sorokin ordered that she not be transferred outside the District of Massachusetts without 48 hours' notice.
But according to the ruling, her attorney could not notify border officers of the court order before they escorted Alawieh to the departure gate. Sorokin concluded the officers did not know of the court order and therefore did not violate it by placing her on the plane. Her lawyers had asked the court to declare the expedited removal order unconstitutional under the Appointments Clause and Suspension Clause, to let her enter removal proceedings before an immigration judge, and to secure the return of her H-1B visa. The First Circuit considered and rejected her argument that the Suspension Clause required broader habeas review, but did not decide the underlying merits of CBP’s removal decision.
Deborah S. Gonzalez, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at Roger Williams University School of Law, said the statute precludes judicial review of expedited removal orders and that nonimmigrant visa holders must request admission when returning to the United States after traveling abroad. Gonzalez said Alawieh was technically at the border when she approached officers at Logan, a legal distinction that placed her case squarely inside the jurisdictional bar rather than in front of a judge who could weigh the facts.
Immigration Groups Call the Precedent a Warning
Civil rights and legal advocacy groups — including the American Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and WilmerHale — filed amicus briefs supporting Alawieh's appeal in 2026, arguing that stripping habeas review in expedited removal cases harms noncitizens and, in this instance, public healthcare access, according to the American Immigration Council. The automatic consequence of an expedited removal order is steep: under U.S. immigration law it triggers a statutory five-year ban preventing the removed individual from re-entering the country, according to LAWS.com News.
Department of Homeland Security officials have said that holding a U.S. visa is a privilege rather than a right and that expressing support for leaders of designated foreign terrorist organizations can be grounds to deny visa issuance. The case later worked its way through the federal courts.
A Gap in Rhode Island's Transplant Care
Alawieh first came to the United States on an exchange visitor visa in 2018, after completing her residency at the American University of Beirut Medical Center. She went on to complete a series of medical fellowships in the United States before accepting a position at Brown University's Alpert Medical School, which sponsored her for an H-1B visa.
According to her lawyers, Alawieh was one of only three transplant nephrologists in Rhode Island. Following her deportation, medical colleagues and community members held public rallies in Providence advocating for her return and citing her role evaluating organ transplant candidates at Brown Medicine, according to NBC News.
Her attorneys had filed the original lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, challenging Customs and Border Protection agents' authority to question and remove her, and arguing that due process required an immigration-court hearing before expedited removal. With the First Circuit's ruling now final on jurisdictional grounds, that broader constitutional question remains unresolved in the courts.
