That Lebanese Doctor the Trump Admin. Sent Packing

It’s been a minute, but it’s possible you’ll recall the story from the spring involving Lebanese doctor and Brown University professor Rasha Alawieh, who was swiftly despatched packing back to Lebanon upon her (tried) return to the U.S. 

Dr. Alawieh sued the Trump administration (of course), difficult her removing from the nation. On Friday, Massachusetts District Court Judge Leo Sorokin (an Obama appointee, for those questioning) dismissed her case. 

Here’s a refresher on the backstory:

The media loves to report these varieties of tales at face worth, realizing that going even an inch deep into it should uncover some uncomfortable truths. For instance, here’s how the New York Times lined the story of Dr. Alawieh:

A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical faculty has been deported from the United States, even though she had a legitimate visa and a court order quickly blocking her expulsion, according to her lawyer and court papers.

…

As it seems, there’s a contact more to the story than the New York Times needed its readers to know, including the fact that the good kidney doctor girl, upon making an attempt to reenter the United States after a go to to Lebanon, was discovered to have a cellphone full of videos and images of Hezbollah militants. And she had allegedly tried to delete many of those images and videos.

READ MORE: OH, THAT: There’s Apparently a Very Good Reason Why Trump’s CBP Sent That Doctor Straight Back to Lebanon

Get Yourself a Burner Phone! CAIR’s Handy-Dandy Guide for Campus Agitators Who Want to Escape Deportation

As famous, Alawieh filed swimsuit against the administration and, initially, acquired some aid from the court, with Sorokin issuing an order barring her removing (the timing of which crossed with Alawieh being plunked on a flight back to Lebanon), but in the judgment he entered on Friday, Sorokin, in a footnote, observes: 

The timeline that emerges from the events’ declarations suggests quickly evolving occasions that don’t, on the current document, assist a discovering that the respondents knowingly violated the Court’s order.

The comparatively transient opinion (14 pages) explains the Catch-22 of Alawieh’s state of affairs — and why the aid she seeks is not one thing a district court can rightly present:

Alawieh no longer seeks release from confinement or any other ongoing supervision by immigration authorities which could represent “custody” in a habeas context. Instead, she primarily seeks to be “released” from an order of expedited removing and the circumstances arising therefrom which restrict her capacity to return to the United States. But the five-year bar on her return is just not a consequence of the detention she initially challenged as illegal. It is a characteristic of the expedited removing order issued during that detention—an order which, finally, led to her release from detention into the cabin of a aircraft leaving the United States. That release, in that fashion, is exactly the remedy that Thuraissigiam describes as the only one correctly within a federal district court’s core habeas jurisdiction. 591 U.S. at 119. Alawieh’s quest for aid from the expedited removing order, on the other hand, seeks one thing the Supreme Court has deemed “so far outside the ‘core’ of habeas” that it “may not be pursued through habeas”—that is, “an order requiring” Alawieh “to be brought to” or allowed to enter “this country.” Id.

Ultimately, Sorokin concludes that the district court lacks the jurisdiction to present Alawieh with that aid: 

In sum, this Court merely can not issue in this habeas motion the orders Alawieh hopes to acquire. Its habeas jurisdiction doesn’t sweep broadly enough to allow the declarations and orders Alawieh requests, both due to the limitations articulated by the Supreme Court in Thuraissigiam and those established by Congress in the INA. Because the aid she seeks falls so far past the conventional core of habeas jurisdiction, her resort to the Suspension Clause can not save her petition from dismissal. See Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. at 140 (discovering Court of Appeals “erred in holding that § 1252(e)(2) violates the Suspension Clause”); D.A.M. v. Barr, 486 F. Supp. 3d 404, 419–21 (D.D.C. 2020) (discovering INA stripped habeas court of jurisdiction to resolve “whether the government may lawfully implement” removing orders that petitioners challenged as void after another district court discovered them “to have been illegally issued,” and concluding Thuraissigiam “forecloses” argument that Suspension Clause revives such claims). And where the Court’s energy is restricted by the INA and the limits of habeas review, the APA can not step in to fill the jurisdictional void. See Arandi, 2020 WL 1891949, at *1 (noting “APA is not itself a jurisdictional statute” and “does not apply where” the INA strips court of jurisdiction).

In other phrases, this district court choose, despite where his sympathies might lie, correctly acknowledges the limits of his jurisdiction and the precedent by which he’s certain. And Dr. Alawieh has discovered a robust object lesson in the perils of enjoying footsie with terrorist teams. 

There’s no indication yet as to whether or not Alawieh will appeal, but RedState will continue to observe the story and present any updates as warranted. 

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is right here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats compelled a authorities shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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