A federal appeals court upheld the dismissal of Dr. Rasha Alawieh's challenge to her removal from the United States, saying federal law bars courts from reviewing the type of claim she brought.
The First Circuit's Oct. 13 opinion upheld the dismissal of the Brown University Health kidney specialist's petition. It did not decide whether the officers were constitutionally appointed or whether their removal decision was correct.
Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen who came to the United States in 2018, held an H-1B work visa issued in June 2024. She practiced transplant nephrology, the treatment of kidney-transplant patients, at Brown University Health and taught at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, according to the opinion.
Customs and Border Protection officers detained her at Logan Airport when she returned from a family visit to Lebanon on March 13, 2025. The opinion says officers found images of Hezbollah's late leader Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah fighters and Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on her phone, including photos she acknowledged deleting. The opinion recounts her explanation that she wanted to avoid a misleading perception and considered the material religious, rather than political or military.
She denied supporting Hezbollah and said her interest in Nasrallah was religious rather than political, the opinion says. Officers canceled her visa and issued a March 14 expedited removal order, a process that can remove a traveler without a full immigration-court hearing. The order carries a five-year bar on applying for readmission.
Alawieh argued that the officers had not been appointed as the Constitution requires and therefore lacked the authority to issue the order. Her petition sought a court's review of the legality of her removal.
Federal law restricts court review of expedited removal orders to a narrow set of questions, such as whether an order was actually issued for the person bringing the case. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch wrote that Alawieh was challenging the legal validity of her order, rather than whether it had been issued. The panel said that challenge fell outside the review Congress permitted.
The court did not decide whether the case had become moot, meaning whether there was still a remedy it could provide.