The media frenzy over Dr. Rasha Alawieh’s deportation is a textbook case of manufactured outrage—a calculated ploy to recast a routine immigration enforcement action as a grand human rights crusade and a constitutional crisis—all in service of their broader agenda: dismantling U.S. immigration law and smearing President Trump.
The Brown University professor, practicing physician, and Lebanese national was expelled from the United States and placed on a plane to her homeland via Paris, yet suddenly, academia and the press were gasping as if Lady Liberty herself had been defiled. The narrative? A misunderstood scholar and kindly medical doctor, cruelly targeted by an immigration system gone rogue. The reality? A foreign national with clear, troubling associations—at minimum, ideological—with a designated terrorist organization was denied reentry, precisely as the law dictates.
A ‘Religious’ Devotion to Hezbollah? Give Me a Break.
Alawieh’s defenders first claimed she was visiting family in Lebanon—like attending a routine family reunion. That narrative collapsed when it was revealed she attended the funeral of a Hezbollah leader—the notorious Hassan Nasrallah. When questioned by Border Security agents, Alawieh insisted she follows Nasrallah “for his religious and spiritual teachings, not his politics.” If you just burst out laughing, you’re not alone. That explanation is as flimsy as a wet paper bag—like those who claim to read Playboy for the articles.
Hezbollah isn’t a religious study group; it’s an Iranian-backed paramilitary force responsible for mass murder, regional destabilization, and the incessant bombardment of our ally Israel. This is the same group that blew up a U.S. Marine barracks in 1983, slaughtered Israeli civilians, and operates as a state-within-a-state in Lebanon. It’s no book club. Expecting a free pass back into the U.S. while claiming newfound affinity for Hezbollah’s so-called “spiritual” leadership is an insult to intelligent thought.
Yet some of her supporters cling to the gimcrack notion that because Dr. Alawieh is a medical professional, she couldn’t possibly sympathize with Hezbollah. We’re told she should be allowed back into the U.S. to treat and grace her patients with her sterling bedside manner. It’s laughable. Professions don’t dictate ideology.
Shall we remind them of the Saudi national doctor who plowed his car into a German Christmas market just months ago? A licensed psychiatrist, legally residing in Germany for nearly two decades, yet still the perpetrator of mass bloodshed. The world has no shortage of educated fanatics. The idea that a white coat absolves someone of their worldview is a level of naïveté the media can use to manipulate public opinion—gaslighting the public with the fallacy of appeal to authority, as if a medical degree confers ideological innocence.
A Visa Is a Privilege, Not a Birthright
Alawieh held a conditional and revocable H-1B visa. Yet her defenders in academia and the legacy media seem to believe foreign nationals should be able to come and go as they please, regardless of national security concerns. They’re dead wrong.
Want proof? I wouldn’t recommend it, but try arriving at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport after publicly praising Hamas leadership. Or attempt stepping off a flight into Tokyo’s Narita or Sydney’s Kingsford Smith while declaring fealty to ISIS. You won’t just be denied entry and put on a plane back home as Alawieh—you’ll likely find yourself detained, interrogated, and potentially facing legal consequences. Nations that take their security seriously screen for ties to terrorist organizations as a matter of course—because it’s common sense.
Yet, when the United States applies the same standard, the open-borders crowd shrieks like a scalded cat.
Judicial Overreach?
Let’s focus on the federal judge’s temporary restraining order and its aftermath. While the activist class may not like it, 8 U.S.C. § 1252(g) explicitly restricts federal district courts from meddling in removal decisions. So, the judge’s ruling was a temporary stay, hastily granted in response to a habeas corpus petition filed by Alawieh’s cousin in an attempt to collaterally attack the immigration decision made by authorities upon her reentry.
When the order reached immigration authorities, DHS stated that Alawieh was already gone. And then, something even more telling happened. Judge Sorokin conspicuously canceled the hearing after receiving a sealed affidavit from DHS—while also allowing some of the attorneys representing Alawieh’s family to abandon ship. These attorneys withdrew from the case “as a result of further diligence,” according to Sorokin.
What exactly did they uncover? They won’t say—but their carefully chosen words speak volumes. If her legal team found something so troubling that some walked away, why should anyone else buy into the media’s sanitized victim narrative?
Alawieh’s supporters have wailed about due process, but protections for foreign nationals are not one-size-fits-all. Those at the border, like Alawieh, have only limited procedural rights, and the government has broad discretion to deny admission.
Due process is not some elaborate Kamala Harris Venn diagram—it means what it says. A person is entitled to the process they are due, nothing more and nothing less. And that process is fundamentally different for an H-1B visa holder at a port of entry than for an American citizen inside the country. The United States is under no obligation to provide endless legal challenges for every non-citizen whose visa gets revoked.
Yet, in the progressive left’s worldview, due process requires a never-ending cycle of litigation against any immigration enforcement action, particularly when it stymies the current administration. Their goal isn’t procedural fairness or substantive due process—it’s lawfare.
The Selective Outrage Machine
The New York Times, Brown University, and the predictably performative puppets on MSNBC and Twitter have rushed to declare this a grave injustice. Spare us. Alawieh is not a hapless martyr ensnared in a dystopian nightmare—thereby a cause célèbre in the fight against immigration enforcement. She was returning from the funeral of a Hezbollah leader, a cold-blooded murderer. The manufactured outrage over her deportation is patently absurd, insulting, and altogether unsurprising.
Brown University, predictably, has responded not by acknowledging the fundamental lesson of Alawieh’s case—namely, that aligning with terrorist figures has consequences—but by advising its entire international community to reconsider both international and even domestic travel, as if the U.S. has suddenly begun indiscriminately rounding up visa holders. This is the progressive playbook: never miss a chance to manufacture outrage, stoke fear, and frame routine immigration enforcement as some ominous slide into authoritarianism.
Dr. Alawieh had her chance. She made her choices. Now she faces the consequences—and no level of theatrical hand-wringing from the outrage machine will change that.
National Sovereignty vs. Elite Capitulation
The law is clear, and the enforcement was justified. As for those claiming Alawieh’s deportation is an “affront to democracy,” let’s be honest—the actual affront comes from those who seek to override the will of the American people through an endless cycle of lawfare, weaponizing the courts to obstruct the very policies Americans voted for last fall.
And make no mistake—this will continue and escalate unless the Supreme Court steps in and shuts it down once and for all.
Charlton Allen is an attorney, former chief executive officer, and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is the founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and the host of the Modern Federalist podcast. X: @CharltonAllenNC
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