Salaam Alaikum,
In a previous newsletter, we shared that we’re lead counsel for Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese Muslim assistant professor of medicine at Brown Medicine. In March 2025, border agents at Boston Logan International Airport unlawfully subjected Dr. Alawieh, who was fasting for Ramadan, to expedited removal when she tried to reenter the U.S. after brief travel abroad–despite a court order prohibiting her deportation. The Boston Globe covered the legal arguments in her case. We are awaiting a decision from the court.
Dr. Alawieh’s case highlights the widening effects of the Trump Administration’s racist, cruel, mass deportation regime. As one of only three transplant nephrologists in Rhode Island, Dr. Alawieh’s life-saving care and expertise is urgently needed there. Her patients, and the doctors scrambling to cover her work, suffer every day that Dr. Alawieh is excluded from the U.S.
Unions like the Committee of Interns and Residents-SEIU (CIR), who represent physicians like Dr. Alawieh in Rhode Island and nationally, are stepping up against mass deportation and human rights abuses in so many ways, reflecting a long history of labor showing up on the front lines of social justice fights. In line with our work to build community power, Muslim Advocates was therefore honored to provide Know-Your-Rights support on immigrants' rights to United Auto Workers (UAW) Region 9A in July, and we’re deeply grateful for CIR’s support of our client Dr. Alawieh and so many immigrant physicians like her. To see the outpouring of support for Dr. Alawieh from her colleagues at CIR, click here. You can join them: sign and share their petition here!
