It’s been a minute, but you may recall the story from the spring involving Lebanese doctor and Brown University professor Rasha Alawieh, who was swiftly sent packing back to Lebanon upon her (attempted) return to the U.S.
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Dr. Alawieh sued the Trump administration (of course), challenging her removal from the country. On Friday, Massachusetts District Court Judge Leo Sorokin (an Obama appointee, for those wondering) dismissed her case.
Here’s a refresher on the backstory:
The media loves to report these kinds of stories at face value, knowing that going even an inch deep into it will uncover some uncomfortable truths. For example, here’s how the New York Times covered the story of Dr. Alawieh:
A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported from the United States, even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion, according to her lawyer and court papers.
…
As it turns out, there’s a touch more to the story than the New York Times wanted its readers to know, including the fact that the nice kidney doctor lady, upon trying to reenter the United States after a visit to Lebanon, was found to have a phone full of videos and photos of Hezbollah militants. And she had allegedly tried to delete many of those photos and videos.
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As noted, Alawieh filed suit against the administration and, initially, got some relief from the court, with Sorokin issuing an order barring her removal (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 parties’ declarations suggests rapidly evolving events that do not, on the present record, support a finding that the respondents knowingly violated the Court’s order.
The relatively brief opinion (14 pages) explains the Catch-22 of Alawieh’s situation — and why the relief she seeks isn’t something a district court can rightly provide:
Alawieh no longer seeks release from confinement or any other ongoing supervision by immigration authorities which might constitute “custody” in a habeas context. Instead, she essentially seeks to be “released” from an order of expedited removal and the conditions arising therefrom which limit her ability to return to the United States. But the five-year bar on her return is not a consequence of the detention she originally challenged as unlawful. It is a feature of the expedited removal order issued during that detention—an order which, ultimately, led to her release from detention into the cabin of a plane leaving the United States. That release, in that fashion, is precisely the remedy that Thuraissigiam describes as the only one properly within a federal district court’s core habeas jurisdiction. 591 U.S. at 119. Alawieh’s quest for relief from the expedited removal order, on the other hand, seeks something 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.
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Ultimately, Sorokin concludes that the district court lacks the jurisdiction to provide Alawieh with that relief:
In sum, this Court simply cannot issue in this habeas action the orders Alawieh hopes to obtain. Its habeas jurisdiction does not sweep broadly enough to permit 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 relief she seeks falls so far beyond the traditional core of habeas jurisdiction, her resort to the Suspension Clause cannot save her petition from dismissal. See Thuraissigiam, 591 U.S. at 140 (finding 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) (finding INA stripped habeas court of jurisdiction to decide “whether the government may lawfully implement” removal orders that petitioners challenged as void after another district court found them “to have been illegally issued,” and concluding Thuraissigiam “forecloses” argument that Suspension Clause revives such claims). And where the Court’s power is restricted by the INA and the limits of habeas review, the APA cannot 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).
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In other words, this district court judge, despite where his sympathies may lie, properly acknowledges the limits of his jurisdiction and the precedent by which he is bound. And Dr. Alawieh has learned a tough object lesson in the perils of playing footsie with terrorist groups.
There’s no indication yet as to whether Alawieh will appeal, but RedState will continue to follow the story and provide any updates as warranted.
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