Brown Univ. Warns Foreign Students Against Travel Abroad

Brown University has advised its international students and staff against traveling abroad after a university professor holding a valid visa was deported upon her return from Lebanon, where she attended the funeral of the late Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Brown's guidance came in a campus-wide email sent Sunday, one week before the university's spring break. The Brown Daily Herald first reported on the email.

"Potential changes in travel restrictions and travel bans, visa procedures and processing, re-entry requirements and other travel-related delays may affect travelers' ability to return to the U.S. as planned," Executive Vice President for Planning and Policy Russell Carey wrote in the email.

At issue is that Dr. Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor of medicine at the Providence, Rhode Island, college, who held a Brown-sponsored H-1B visa, was deported back to Lebanon after being held by U.S. immigration officials at Boston's Logan International Airport on Thursday.

The Department of Homeland Security said Alawieh was returning from Lebanon after attending "the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah — a brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree," The Wall Street Journal reported. Further, DHS said Alawieh had photos of Nasrallah and Iran leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on her phone but deleted them before returning to the U.S.

"A visa is a privilege not a right," DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The New York Times. "Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is common-sense security."

The funeral for Hezbollah was held Feb. 23 in Beirut. Alawieh, 34, had lived in the U.S. for six years, according to the Journal.

A judge ordered Customs and Border Protection to hold Alawieh for 48 hours but she was deported anyway, according to reports.

Regardless of the circumstances around Alawieh's deportation, Brown urged foreign students and staff to "consider postponing or delaying personal travel outside the United States until more information is available from the U.S. Department of State," the email read.

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