On Monday evening, approximately 300 people gathered at the Rhode Island State House to protest the recent deportation of Assistant Professor of Medicine Rasha Alawieh. Alawieh — a kidney transplant specialist with Brown Medicine — has lived in the United States for six years and held an H-1B visa, a type of visa for highly specialized workers.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation helped organize the rally alongside several members of the “medical community,” said Brown Pediatrics Resident Physician Laura Schwartz. Activists from the Deportation Defense Coalition of Rhode Island, which includes PSL, also spoke at the event.
“We’re rallying here in support of Dr. Alawieh in particular, because this is so emblematic of the injustices occurring” with deportations across the country, Schwartz said. “We know her name, so we can stand here and shout it, but we care just as much about all the people whose names we don’t know.”
“She’s wonderful, just a really wonderful person,” said Allie Lee MD’27, who did research with Alawieh for several months.
Alawieh also mentored Nicole Tanda MD’27 and Noah Feldman ’22 MD’26 in Warren Alpert Medical School’s weekly small group sessions. “I’m a naturalized immigrant,” Tanda said. “Immigrant rights are a topic near and dear to my heart.”
Feldman said that Alawieh’s deportation was exemplary of the risks facing immigrants across the country. “If they can deport a doctor, then they can deport anyone,” Feldman said.
Many rally attendees, including Feldman and Tanda, expressed disappointment in Brown’s response to increased risks of deportation.
“My most generous interpretation is that they’re scared out of their minds that they’re going to get federal funding cuts,” Feldman said. “I love Brown. It’s a really great place. But I think that they’re mostly worried about their bottom line. … I think that’s shameful.”
Feldman said he wanted Brown to “mount a defense” in Alawieh’s support and “place more protections among students and faculty” against deportations. Tanda added that she hoped Brown would ask for Alawieh’s immediate return to the United States so she could continue her work in Rhode Island.
The University did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Before the rally, Brown Spokesperson Brian Clark said Monday that “we continue to seek to learn more about what has happened.”
Alawieh was detained at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday following travel to her home country of Lebanon. Despite a judge’s orders requiring 48 hours’ notice of Alawieh’s removal from Massachusetts, Alawieh was deported on Friday.
Earlier on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security posted in a statement on X that Alawieh attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Politico reported that Customs and Border Protection agents found “sympathetic photos and videos” of Hezbollah leaders on her cell phone.
According to filings, Alawieh told agents she attended the funeral due to religious — not political — support for Nasrallah. Multiple attendees and organizers at the rally questioned the legitimacy of the claims made about the reasoning behind Alawieh’s deportation.
“I find it hard to believe anything that this administration puts out,” said Schwartz. “I don’t believe it, until they give me some proof,” said Christine Kennedy, a family doctor for Brown University Health.
Frank Shea, who attended the rally with Kennedy, added that regardless of the reasoning, he was concerned about “a violation of process” with Alawieh’s deportation. “If there’s a process, go through the process. Don’t just remove somebody.”
Maya Leher MA’23, an organizer with PSL, noted in a speech at the rally that Nasrallah’s funeral was widely attended.
Leher mentioned the recent detentions of Fabian Schmidt and Mahmoud Khalil as evidence of the Trump administration’s targeting of immigrants. Rally attendees chanted “free Fabian Schmidt now, free Mahmoud Khalil now” and “hands off our doctors now.”
“We demand that (Brown and Brown University Health) use all of their power to put pressure on the government” to bring Alawieh back to Rhode Island, said Leher.
In a statement to The Herald, Providence City Councilman John Goncalves wrote that Alawieh’s detention and deportation were “an appalling failure of our immigration system.” Goncalves encouraged community members to attend the Monday rally. “We must demand accountability and work to bring Dr. Alawieh home,” he wrote.
Schwartz said that immigrants are “the backbone of our medical system.” She noted that Rhode Island is currently experiencing physician shortages in many specialties. If deportations of medical professionals increase, “it’s only going to make an incredibly severe problem worse.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Ciara Meyer is a section editor from Saratoga Springs, New York. She plans on concentrating in Statistics and English Nonfiction. In her free time, she loves scrapbooking and building lego flowers.
