Obama-Appointee Judge Follows the INA and Case Law, Dismisses Claim by Deported Physician

Judge Leo Sorokin of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama in 2014. On October 31, he issued an order in Alawieh v. U.S. CBP, dismissing a claim by a Lebanese national (and physician) who was subjected to expedited removal and removed in March. Judge Sorokin probably didn’t want to issue that order, but he read the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and case law and concluded he had no other choice. How refreshing. 

Rasha Alawieh’s Initial Residence in the United States

The petitioner is Dr. Rasha Alawieh (through counsel). After completing medical school and residency in her home country, “she obtained” an unspecified visa “allowing her to pursue further medical training in the United States”. 

More precisely, beginning in June 2018, she completed three fellowships here and accepted a position at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University, in Rhode Island. 

Brown sponsored her for an H-1B nonimmigrant visa, which permitted her to work and teach at the university for three years. USCIS approved the visa and Dr. Alawieh started work at Brown in July 2024. 

“By early 2025, Alawieh had lived, studied, and worked in the United States continuously for more than six-and-a-half years pursuant to a series of visas”, apparently without incident. But in February 2025, she made what Judge Sorokin described as “a parlous decision”, that is, returning to Lebanon to visit her family. 

Hassan Nasrallah and “the Party of God”

During her visit to Lebanon, Dr. Alawieh “attended an event commemorating Hassan Nasrallah, a Shia Muslim religious figure and former leader of Hezbollah who died in late September 2024”.

Following his death in an Israeli air raid in September 2024, AP described Nasrallah as “an astute strategist” who “reshaped Hezbollah into an archenemy of Israel, cementing alliances with Shiite religious leaders in Iran and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas.”

That said, the group he led, Hezbollah (the “Party of God”) was and remains a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and “has been linked to a series of terrorist attacks, including one in 2012 against Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, two in Argentina during the 1990s, and the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy and Multinational Force barracks in Beirut.”

As Judge Sorokin noted, “Though Alawieh describes her own interest in Nasrallah as limited to his religious teachings, she says some members of her family supported his political party as well.”

Dr. Alawieh’s Attempted Return to the United States

In advance of her return to the United States, Dr. Alawieh sought and obtained an “H-1B visa (entry permit)” from the U.S. embassy in Beirut. Entry permit in hand, she flew through Paris on her way to Logan International Airport in Boston, Mass., arriving on March 13. 

Under section 235(b)(3) of the INA, all aliens “seeking admission or readmission to . . . the United States shall be inspected by immigration officers”, in this case, CBP officers at the agency’s Office of Field Operations (OFO) at Logan.

The OFO officer who inspected Dr. Alawieh apparently referred her to more intensive secondary inspection, “with officers reviewing the contents of her cellphone and questioning her about specific messages and photographs, as well as her activities while in Lebanon and her travels elsewhere in the Middle East.”

Interestingly, as Judge Sorokin noted in a footnote: 

Alawieh’s WhatsApp history included depictions of ‘Hezbollah fighters and martyrs’ and links to videos featuring Nasrallah and the leader of Iran. . .. Some of these photos and videos were among items Alawieh had deleted in the days before she flew to the United States.

That may suggest Dr. Alawieh anticipated the additional scrutiny she received from CBP at Logan, or perhaps her phone was simply running out of space. 

Regardless, OFO concluded she was inadmissible as her “true intentions could not be determined due to derogatory information discovered during the inspection process”, subjected her to expedited removal under section 235(b)(1) of the INA, cancelled her H-1B visa, and obtained a ticket for her out of the United States. 

Expedited Removal

As I have explained in the past, DHS usually must obtain a removal order from an immigration judge at the end of removal proceedings under section 240 of the INA to deport or exclude an alien from the United States.

Expedited removal is the biggest exception to that rule, as it allows (inter alia) a CBP officer at a port of entry — not an immigration judge — to issue the removal order if the officer determines an “applicant for entry” lacks proper documents that alien to be admitted (and thus is inadmissible under section 212(a)(7) of the INA) or because the alien sought admission through fraud or misrepresentation (and thus is inadmissible under section 212(a)(6)(C) of the INA). 

There is, however, an exception to expedited removal for aliens who either request asylum or claim fear of harm or torture if they are returned. 

CBP must send such aliens to USCIS asylum officers for “credible fear” interviews, to determine whether they may be eligible for humanitarian protection. 

If at the end of those interviews, asylum officers issue a “positive credible fear determination”, the alien is placed in section 240 removal proceedings before an immigration judge. 

Aliens who receive “negative credible fear determinations”, on the other hand, are subject to removal, though they can seek review of those decisions from immigration judges. If the judge reverses the asylum officer determination, the alien is placed in section 240 removal proceedings, but if the judge affirms the asylum officer, the alien is returned to DHS for removal.

But as Judge Sorokin noted, “Neither the record nor the briefing to this Court suggests that Alawieh claimed a fear of torture or persecution if returned to Lebanon”, and in fact “[h]er voluntary decision to travel there suggests she held no such fear”. 

Limitations on Judicial Review under Section 242 of the INA

When Congress added expedited removal to section 235 of the INA in 1996, it also amended the rules governing judicial review of immigration matters in section 242 of the INA to limit the ability of aliens subject to expedited removal to impede their removals by seeking relief in the federal courts. 

Specifically, section 242(a)(2)(A)(i) of the INA bars courts from reviewing “any individual determination or to entertain any other cause or claim arising from or relating to the implementation or operation of an” expedited removal order of removal order, with only narrow exceptions in section 242(e). 

How “narrow”? 

Well, section 242(e)(2) of the INA permits those subject to expedited removal to seek district court review only if they claim they: (1) are U.S. citizens; (2) weren’t ordered removed under section 235(b)(1) of the INA; or (3) are green card holders or have been granted asylum or refugee status.

Habeas Corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 and Thuraissigiam

More precisely, section 242(e)(2) of the INA only permits aliens subject to expedited removal to have those three questions reviewed in “habeas corpus proceedings”. That brings me to 28 U.S.C. § 2241, which governs federal courts’ authority to grant writs of habeas corpus. 

“Habeas corpus” is Latin for “that you have the body”, and in Anglo-American law, detainees generally seek it to have the legality of their confinement reviewed. That’s clear from the first clause in section 2241(c) of Title 28 of the U.S. Code, “The writ of habeas corpus shall not extend to a prisoner unless. . ..”

I say “detainees generally seek it to have the legality of their detention reviewed” because aliens have sought it in the past for reasons having nothing to do with the legality of their immigration detention. 

In DHS v. Thuraissigiam, for example, the Supreme Court considered a request by a Sri Lankan national apprehended by CBP immediately after he entered the United States illegally and subjected to expedited removal under section 235(b)(1) of the INA.

He claimed he’d be harmed if returned, but when the asylum officer issued a negative credible fear determination in his case, an immigration judge affirmed it. 

Thuraissigiam then filed a habeas petition claiming he’d be harmed if returned to Sri Lanka based on his ethnicity and political opinion, but while the district court dismissed that claim, the Ninth Circuit reversed, finding the judicial review limitations in section 242(e)(2) of the INA violated his constitutional rights. 

DHS sought certiorari from the Supreme Court, and in June 2020 the Court reversed the circuit court’s decision, finding no constitutional violations in the limitations Congress placed on judicial review for aliens subject to expedited removal.

Release “in the Cabin of a Plane” Headed Out of the United States

More saliently, Justice Alito writing for the majority in Thuraissigiam, also clarified the limitations on aliens’ habeas claims: 

Although the historic role of habeas is to secure release from custody, the Ninth Circuit did not suggest that release, at least in the traditional sense of the term, was required. Instead, what it found to be necessary was a “meaningful opportunity” for review of the procedures used in determining that respondent did not have a credible fear of persecution. 

“Thus, even according to the Ninth Circuit,” Justice Alito continued, Thuraissigiam’s “petition did not call for traditional habeas relief”, and in fact the alien conceded the government could properly detain him pending both expedited removal and removal proceedings under section 240 of the INA. 

The problem with Thuraissigiam’s claim, the majority concluded, is that “the Government is happy to release him — provided the release occurs in the cabin of a plane bound for Sri Lanka”, but the alien didn’t “want anything like that” — he wanted an order allowing him to remain to seek additional review.

“Claims so far outside the ‘core’ of habeas may not be pursued through habeas”, Justice Alito explained.

Dr. Alawieh’s First Habeas Claim

Returning to Dr. Alawieh, after she was inspected at Logan, CBP issued a final expedited removal order, prompting her cousin to file a habeas petition with the District Court approximately one hour before her plane out was scheduled to depart on March 14.

Judge Sorokin quickly issued an order preventing CBP from sending her out of Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice to his court, but although CBP was aware she was seeking habeas, the agency didn’t know about that order until after she was gone. 

The government replied to her petition three days later, but Dr. Alawieh’s attorneys thereafter withdrew. 

The Amended Habeas Petition and Judge Sorokin’s October 31 Order

In May 2025, new counsel for the alien appeared, and filed an amended habeas petition, alleging among other things that “allowing low-level” CBP “employees to purport to issue” an expedited removal order “violates the Appointments Clause”, Art. II, sec. 2, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution.

From my experience, that would have been a novel claim, but that fact notwithstanding, Judge Sorokin never considered it or any of her other claims in the amended petition.

Instead, recognizing the limits on his authority in 28 U.S.C. § 2241(c), section 242(e) of the INA, and the Supreme Court’s opinion in Thuraissigiam, he dismissed her amended petition. 

Even the fact that Dr. Alawieh, having been removed under expedited removal, is now barred from reentering for five years pursuant to section 212(a)(9)(A)(i) of the INA did not sway the court. 

As Judge Sorokin held: 

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. 

Unique and Compelling

This is a unique case, as Dr. Alawieh is seeking “habeas” in circumstances very similar to ones the Supreme Court has dispositively held are inappropriate for habeas. 

But it’s also an emotionally compelling — and charged — case, involving a skilled and accomplished physician who was barred from readmission for reasons having to do with the (politically contentious) situation in the Middle East and Levant. 

Congress, in section 242 of the INA, funneled nearly all reviews in removal cases to the appellate U.S. circuit courts, and conversely has gone to great lengths to limit the immigration review authority of trial-level federal district court judges. 

Despite that, countless district court judges are currently considering other aliens’ claims, many brought in habeas. Kudos to Judge Sorokin for filtering out the emotionally charged claims in this case — and CBP’s apparently inadvertent failure to comply with his earlier order — and recognizing the limitations on his judicial authority in statute and precedent.