Surgeon and Professor Is Deported to Lebanon Despite a Judge's Order
Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, a Lebanese citizen who had traveled to Lebanon last month to visit relatives, was detained on Thursday when she returned to the United States, according to a court complaint filed by her cousin Yara Chehab.
Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts ordered the government on Friday evening to provide the court with 48 hours' notice before deporting Dr. Alawieh. But she was put on a flight to Paris, presumably on her way to Lebanon.
In a second order filed Sunday morning, the judge said there was reason to believe U.S. Customs and Border Protection had willfully disobeyed his previous order to give the court notice before expelling the doctor. He said he had followed 'common practice in this district as it has been for years,' and ordered the federal agency to respond to what he called 'serious allegations.'
A hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday.
Court documents related to the case were provided to The New York Times by Clare Saunders, a member of the legal team representing Ms. Chehab, who filed petitions to prevent her cousin's deportation, and then to request that her cousin be allowed to return to the United States.
Ms. Chehab's petitions name several members of the Trump administration as defendants, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Peter Flores.
Thomas Brown, a lawyer representing Dr. Alawieh and her employer, Brown Medicine, said that while the doctor was in Lebanon, the U.S. consulate issued her an H-1B visa, which allows highly skilled foreign citizens to live and work in the United States. Brown Medicine, a nonprofit medical practice, had sponsored her application for the visa.
According to Ms. Chehab's complaint, when Dr. Alawieh landed at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday, she was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers and held at the airport for 36 hours, for reasons that are unclear.
Ms. Saunders said in an affidavit that she went to the airport Friday and notified Customs and Border Protection officials there — before the flight to Paris was scheduled to depart — that there was a court order barring the doctor's expulsion. She said that the officers there took no action and gave her no information until after the plane had taken off.
The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Alawieh graduated from the American University of Beirut in 2015. Three years later, she came to the United States, where she held medical fellowships at the Ohio State University and the University of Washington, and then worked as a resident at Yale.
Before the new visa was issued, she held a J-1 visa, the type commonly used by foreign students.
There is a shortage of American doctors working in Dr. Alawieh's area of specialty: organ transplants. The field is known for grueling, unpredictable work hours, with doctors often flying through the night to pick up donated organs before performing emergency surgery.
'It's very disruptive to family life,' said Dr. David Weill, a former director of Stanford's lung transplant program who is now a consultant to hospitals. Because many younger American physicians have growing concerns about work-life balance, 'a lot of hospitals are turning to talented doctors from outside the U.S. to get this work done,' Dr. Weill said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Minnesota minimum wage will increase 2.5% to $11.41 per hour on Jan. 1
A server resets tables at a Minnesota restaurant earlier this year. (Photo by Ellen Schmidt/Minnesota Reformer) Minnesota's statewide minimum wage will increase 28 cents to $11.41 per hour on Jan. 1, a 2.5% increase based on the annual rate of inflation. The minimum wage applies to virtually all employees since the Democratic-controlled Legislature eliminated a lower minimum wage for small businesses, workers younger than 18 and workers on J-1 visas in 2024. (As before, tips cannot be counted toward the minimum wage.) Only workers under 20 years old in their first 90 days of training may receive a lower wage of $9.31 per hour starting in 2026. Minneapolis and St. Paul each have higher minimum wages of $15.97 per hour, which will increase with inflation in 2026. Small and micro businesses in St. Paul may pay a lower minimum wage, but the city is phasing in a single minimum wage for all employees by 2028. Minnesota's minimum wage is higher than most of its neighbors' (save South Dakota), but it isn't enough to cover basic living expenses. The cost of living for a childless, working-age adult requires earning $17.68 per hour, according to the state Department of Employment and Economic Development. A household with two children requires two parents earning at least $24.25 per hour. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has remained unchanged since 2009 and is the effective minimum wage in 20 states, including Wisconsin. Minnesota's minimum wage has been indexed to inflation since 2018 but was limited to annual adjustments of 2.5% until last year when lawmakers raised the threshold to 5% to ensure the lowest paid workers receive larger raises in periods of high inflation. The increase will directly affect a relatively small number of workers. Fewer than 90,000 salaried and hourly jobs out of more than 3.3 million in Minnesota were paid at or below the minimum wage in 2023, according to the state's latest minimum wage report. Still, a rising minimum wage puts upward pressure on jobs paying just above minimum wage, creating a ripple effect across a larger number of workers. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Covid-19 Vaccine Guidelines Are Changing. What We Know About Who Can Get a Shot.
It's late August, there's a hurricane coming up the East Coast, schools are starting to open, and no one has any idea who can get an updated Covid-19 shot. It has killed up to 56,000 people in the U.S. since last October, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and sickened up to 18 million. Pfizer Moderna and Novavax all plan to launch new versions of their Covid-19 vaccines this fall, updated to target a family of Covid-19 viruses called JN.1.
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
GLP-1s, cancer care are driving higher employer health care costs in 2026
Advertisement Companies' strategies for managing the ballooning costs, several experts said, will likely skew toward more aggressive scrutiny of their health insurance carriers and other third-party vendors that help them manage costs, and finding alternatives, if necessary. The higher costs raise the prospect of higher insurance premiums and deductibles for workers, though Ellen Kelsay, CEO of the Business Group on Health, said companies will try to shield employees as much as they can. Kelsay called passing costs on to employees 'a Band-Aid approach' that doesn't fix the long-term cost dynamics. 'Employers are still going to be absorbing 90-plus percent of the health care costs,' Kelsay said on a call with reporters. 'They are still going to do their level best to absorb as much of this cost increase as possible.' Advertisement The 9 percent projected median increase is up from an estimated 8 percent this year and reported increases of 7.5 percent in 2024 and 6.8 percent in 2023. Even if workers don't foot the higher costs directly, the climbing costs of health care can limit the growth of their wages over time. The 9 percent increase is on par with other projections. Last week, the The biggest culprit for higher costs in the Business Group on Health survey is increased use of blockbuster GLP-1 drugs for obesity and diabetes, sold under the brand names Wegovy, Ozempic, Zepbound, and Mounjaro. About 80 percent of respondents to the survey said they've seen an uptick in the use of those drugs, and another 15 percent said they anticipate a future increase. To mitigate GLP-1 expenses, the survey found that the number of employers who cover them for conditions other than diabetes will stagnate. Currently, 99 percent of employers surveyed cover them for diabetes and 73 percent cover them for obesity. Only 6 percent of employers said they had dropped coverage for obesity. Employers that cover GLP-1s for obesity said they'll put more hurdles around their use, such as requiring prescriptions from specific providers and requiring users to participate in weight management programs. Such utilization management tactics are already common. The survey found 90 percent of plans require prior authorization and 54 percent require workers to participate in weight management programs. Advertisement Cancer was the top condition driving employers' health care costs for the fourth year in a row, as diagnoses become more prevalent and the cost of treatment rises. Almost 90 percent of employers said cancer was among the top three conditions costing them the most in 2025, up from 80 percent last year. About half of employers plan to steer their workers toward specific cancer centers that offer quality services at lower costs, known as centers of excellence, in 2026, and another 23 percent will consider doing so by 2028. Other conditions were less likely to show up in employers' top three lists for costs. Diabetes dropped from 28 percent in 2024 to 21 percent in 2025. Musculoskeletal conditions dropped from 74 percent to 71 percent and cardiovascular conditions dropped from 40 percent to 35 percent. Almost three-quarters of employers said their workers are seeking out mental health and substance use disorder treatment at higher rates, and another 17 percent anticipate future increases. Another area that's driving higher spending is more coverage for women's health needs. Next year, 58 percent of employers said they plan to expand preventive care for women, an increase of 22 percentage points in two years. Almost 60 percent of employers said they'll provide menopause support services next year, up from 28 percent in 2024. Other services are also on the rise. In 2026, 36 percent of employers will cover doula services, 55 percent will cover services to treat postpartum depression, and 43 percent will cover initiatives to support high-risk pregnancies in under-resourced populations. Robert Andrews, CEO of the Health Transformation Alliance, a coalition of about 80 self-insured employers that cover 5 million people, said that while he hasn't done a formal survey, he's hearing that costs are rising 7 percent to 9 percent at the median. That said, some of his group's members have kept costs flat. The latter are companies that are aggressive about auditing claims and not paying erroneous, fraudulent, or otherwise inflated claims. Advertisement Another piece of advice Andrews gives members is to carefully review their agreements with carriers. 'Watch your carrier very closely, audit the carrier, make sure you're getting the deal that you bargained for,' he said. Andrews also recommends companies put a cap on out-of-network charges for employees who have to get care at out-of-network hospitals. Not only that, make sure the insurer is actually enforcing the cap, because often it's not, he said. One of the Business Group on Health's members is Delta Airlines, where the cost increases are consistently in the low single digits, said Henry Ting, the company's chief health and wellness officer. 'That's not just an accident or by chance,' said Ting, a cardiologist who worked at Mayo Clinic for over two decades. 'We do take a lot of actions to make sure we're delivering the best value.' Delta's approach to keeping health insurance costs down Delta has collected over 10 billion de-identified records from its 100,000 employees and their dependents and used it to see where the high costs are. One revelation was that a significant percentage of cancers among employees were diagnosed because of symptoms and not through screening tests. Those people also tended to have more advanced disease. Delta now has a 'Living Well with Dr. Henry' series for employees in which Ting educates people on screenings. Advertisement 'Then we make it easy for them to schedule those appointments without a lot of friction,' Ting said. 'I'd like to have 99 percent of our cancers diagnosed on a routine screening test rather than feeling a lump or pain or bleeding.' The Commonwealth Fund last year convened a One of the task force members is Paul Fronstin, who serves as director of health benefits research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute. When it comes to strategies for cutting down on costs, Fronstin said he thinks employers will scrutinize vendors, make changes to plan designs and networks, and use so-called point solutions, which are vendors that help patients manage specific conditions, like type 2 diabetes or mental health conditions. But with unemployment still at record lows, Fronstin thinks retention will be front of mind for employers, making them hesitant to shift costs onto employees. 'We've seen in the past that employers haven't increased premiums,' he said, 'or to the degree premiums have gone up for employees, they've gone up in proportion to what the employer pays.'
