Donald Trump has deported a Brown University doctor over her alleged links to Hezbollah and the terror group’s longtime leader who was killed last year. 

Dr Rasha Alawieh, 47, from Lebanon, was deported from Boston Logan International Airport to Paris on Friday despite having a US visa and a job teaching at the Ivy League college in Rhode Island. 

Federal authorities told Politico that border officials moved to expel Alawieh from the country after they found ‘sympathetic photos and videos’ of prominent Hezbollah figures in a deleted items folder on her cell phone. 

The physician, who specializes in kidney transplants alongside her professor duties at Brown, also told Customs and Border Protection agents that she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah while visiting Lebanon. 

Alawieh said she followed Nasrallah’s teachings ‘from a religious perspective’ but did not align with him politically, according to an official report by an immigration officer.

‘I have a lot of WhatsApp groups with families and friends who send them,’ the doctor said, according to a transcript filed in court on Monday. 

‘So I am a Shia Muslim and he is a religious figure. He has a lot of teachings and he is highly regarded in the Shia community.

‘I think if you listen to one of his sermons you would know what I mean. He is a religious, spiritual person, as I said, he has very high value. His teachings are about spirituality and morality.’

Donald Trump has deported Dr Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University doctor, over her alleged links to Hezbollah and the terror group's longtime leader who was killed last year

Donald Trump has deported Dr Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University doctor, over her alleged links to Hezbollah and the terror group’s longtime leader who was killed last year 

The physician, who specializes in kidney transplants alongside her professor duties at Brown, also told Customs and Border Protection agents that she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (pictured) while visiting Lebanon

The physician, who specializes in kidney transplants alongside her professor duties at Brown, also told Customs and Border Protection agents that she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (pictured) while visiting Lebanon

Nasrallah, who led Shia Islamist paramilitary group Hezbollah for more than 30 years, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in September last year – a major victory for Israel. 

Hezbollah has been recognized as a terrorist organization by the US for the last 20 years.  

Dr Rasha Alawieh has been deported

Dr Rasha Alawieh has been deported 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Sady summarized in a court filing on Monday that Alawieh’s ‘true intentions in the United States could not be determined’ from her interview at the Massachusetts airport. 

‘As such CBP canceled her visa and deemed Dr. Alawieh inadmissible to the United States,’ he added. 

The court filings gave a public explanation for the first time about why Alawieh was deported despite holding a H1B visa for foreigners with special skills associated with jobs which are typically hard to fill using American recruits. 

Justice Department lawyers filed the papers just before a hearing on Monday to decide whether the government had defied a judge’s order made on Friday saying that Alawieh should not be deported without advance notice to the court.   

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin made a last-minute decision to postpone the hearing on Monday morning to give the government an extra week to submit evidence about Alawieh’s case.

Federal authorities told Politico that border officials moved to expel Alawieh from the country after they found 'sympathetic photos and videos' of prominent Hezbollah figures in a deleted items folder on her cell phone. It's the latest deportation in Donald Trump's sweep of the nation

Federal authorities told Politico that border officials moved to expel Alawieh from the country after they found ‘sympathetic photos and videos’ of prominent Hezbollah figures in a deleted items folder on her cell phone. It’s the latest deportation in Donald Trump’s sweep of the nation

CBP official John Wallace said the federal government did not hear about the judge’s order in time to halt Alawieh’s deportation on an Air France flight. 

‘At no time, would CBP not take a court order seriously or fail to abide by a court’s order,’ Wallace wrote in a sworn declaration. 

‘Due to the extremely close timing between the issuance of the court order in this case and the boarding time of [the Air France flight] CBP did not receive the court’s orders until after the flight departed the United States,’ Wallace added.

Acting on her behalf while she is out of the country, Alawieh’s cousin filed a motion accusing customs officials of ‘willfully’ disobeying the judge’s order.  

Alawieh lived in the US since 2018, when she moved on a student visa as part of her nephrology fellowship at Ohio State University. 

She later attended programs at the University of Washington and Yale.  

Brown Medicine, where Alawieh is currently employed, is a not-for-profit medical practice that is its own organization and serves its own patients directly. 

It is affiliated with Brown University’s medical school.

Pictured: Pedestrians make their way past a building housing the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island

Pictured: Pedestrians make their way past a building housing the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island 

Alawieh, who specializes in kidney transplants alongside her professor duties at Brown, also told Customs and Border Protection agents that she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (pictured) while visiting Lebanon

Alawieh, who specializes in kidney transplants alongside her professor duties at Brown, also told Customs and Border Protection agents that she attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (pictured) while visiting Lebanon

‘My colleagues and I are outraged over Dr Alawieh’s deportation. She is a valued colleague and we hope for justice and her return to Rhode Island,’ said George Bayliss, an associate professor of medicine at Brown University.

U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo of Rhode Island, a Democrat, said in a statement over the weekend that is ‘committed to getting answers from the Department of Homeland Security to provide Dr. Alawieh, her family, her colleagues, and our community the clarity we all deserve.’

A rally was planned to support her Monday night at the Rhode Island statehouse.  

It’s the latest deportation of a foreign-born person with a U.S. visa in the past week, following the arrest and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student who led protests against the Gaza war. 

He is currently being held in federal detention.  

The Trump administration also transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations.

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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk