Images of former Hezbollah leaders, Hassan Nasrallah, left, and Hashem Safieddine, are seen at the stage for their funerals at the Sports City Stadium on Feb. 23, 2025, in Beirut, Lebanon. Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a Brown Medicine kidney doctor, was deported after U.S. Customs officials found photos of the funeral on her phone. She told immigration officials she attended the funeral in the context of his religious practice, according to news reports based on court documents challenging Alawieh’s deportation. (Photo by Daniel Carde/Getty Images)
As public outcry over the deportation of a Brown Medicine kidney doctor swelled, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security took to X.
The Monday post social media touts the deportation of Dr. Rasha Alawieh as “commonsense security,” stating that Alawieh attended a mass funeral for the late leader of Hezbollah in her home country, Lebanon, last month. It doesn’t acknowledge the rest of the conversation between Alawieh and customs officials at Boston Logan International Airport last week before they deported her.
And thanks to a federal court rule limiting public electronic access, the interview transcript can’t be accessed online. The ongoing legal battle over Alawieh’s deportation last week highlights the weaknesses in the 2007 clause meant to protect sensitive information in federal immigration and Social Security cases.
(Photo courtesy of Roger Williams University School of Law)
“It was a well-intentioned rule to start out with,” said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law. “The problem is that the rule has turned out to basically harm public knowledge about immigration cases, and basically protect the government from accountability for the government’s own abuses.”
Under the federal civil procedure rule, attorneys and parties to a case can still access all court filings electronically, but general members of the public can only see the docket list and any court opinion, order, disposition or judgment.
In Alawieh’s case, two of the 21 documents on the docket — both orders from U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorkin — are publicly available online.
The federal rule doesn’t prevent the rest of the filings from being viewed in person. Seven reporters headed to the Boston courthouse Monday morning to read the documents and cover a case hearing, which was postponed after one of Alawieh’s lawyers withdrew from the case.
Among them was Edward Fitzpatrick, a reporter for The Boston Globe in Rhode Island, who had covered the Alawieh case throughout the weekend. On Monday morning, he huddled around a single computer in the Boston courthouse alongside reporters from the Providence Journal, POLITICO, Wall Street Journal and local outlets. Rhode Island Current was unable to access the documents electronically.
State House rally protests deportation of Brown Medicine kidney doctor
Fitzpatrick had to take notes by hand on the documents on the screen. They were not allowed to print or take photos of the filings.
Fitzpatrick’s story, along with others by media outlets able to access documents in person that morning, offer the only glimpse into what happened at the airport last week.
What they reveal is far more complex than the DHS post on social media.
Q&A transcript key document
Alawieh, who has spent the last six years studying and working in the United States, was on her way back to her job in Rhode Island, having just secured an H-1B work visa from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. At the border checkpoint, her phone was taken and examined, revealing photos of various Hezbollah leaders. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials detained her, holding her in custody for 36 hours. By then, her cousin filed the court petition, seeking a judge’s intervention.
Sorkin ordered immigration officials not to deport Alawieh. But she was already on a plane back to Paris by the time customs agents claim they received the order.
When questioned at the airport prior to her deportation, Alawieh allegedly admitted to attending the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in February. The stadium event held in Beirut on Feb. 23 drew hundreds of thousands of attendees.
However, she said she was not political and only viewed Nasrallah in the context of his religious practice, as Fitzpatrick reported after viewing the documents at the Boston courthouse on Monday.
“To get that exchange of questions and answers was a key document into what happened and why,” Fitzpatrick said in an interview.
Fitzpatrick, who also serves as a board member for the New England First Amendment Coalition, did not think limiting public access to the electronic documents was helpful for either side in the case, or for the public’s trust in the courts.
“I received so many questions on this story, and a lot of the answers to those questions lie in those documents,” he said. “The government is the one who always says, ‘We want one official record.’ It’s going to be a lot easier to get that record and have it be absolutely correct if it’s publicly accessible.”
Shortly after Fitzpatrick and other reporters jotted down notes from the documents in Boston, Sorkin sealed the case, barring access to the information, even in person. Stephanie Marzouk, Alawieh’s attorney, had asked for the case to be sealed, according to the court docket. Marzouk declined to comment when reached by email Wednesday.
Margulies said attorneys often seek to seal records or impede access as a way to gain an edge in a case.
‘They’re the ones pushing the narrative’
But it might not help Alawieh’s cause, especially when the federal administration is using social media to paint a limited picture of her religious and political beliefs.
“It seems like it’s not really serving anyone other than DHS at this point because they’re the ones pushing the narrative,” Zachary Lyons, an immigration attorney with Barton Gilman LLP in Providence.
Lyons was not shocked to learn that Alawieh had been sent back to her home country despite having obtained a visa permitting her to work in Rhode Island as a kidney transplant doctor. Fourth Amendment protections do not apply at ports of entry, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have broad authority to deny entry under the Immigration and Nationality Act, Lyons said.
However, he was unsure what clause within the 1952 law would be used to justify Alawieh’s deportation. Unable to access past or future court filings in the case, he can’t find out.
Lyons is already familiar with the federal rule that limits public electronic access to court documents in federal immigration cases. It’s not a common problem because it doesn’t apply to cases in separate federal immigration court, but it comes up enough in civil appeals to cause frustration, he said.
“We’re in the year 2025,” Lyons said. “We can access other court documents online.”
Lyons also questioned how limiting electronic access to documents offers personal privacy when the same information can be viewed in person.
The problem is that the rule has turned out to basically harm public knowledge about immigration cases, and basically protect the government from accountability for the government’s own abuses.
– Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law
But not every case has garnered as much attention as Alawieh’s. In most cases, members of the public and reporters won’t be interested enough to go to a courthouse to hunt down the documents, Margulies said.
Judges can circumvent the rule by specifically ordering not to apply the limits on electronic access. They can also agree to lift documents previously placed under seal.
In 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy of Rhode Island offered both these remedies in a case regarding the release of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees from the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls. Originally, court records for the detainees were sealed, but McElroy agreed to make everything but medical information publicly available at the request of the Providence Journal, which covered the hearings. McElroy also suspended the limitations on electronic access to court documents in the case as part of the same June 7, 2020, order because the courthouse was closed at the time due to the pandemic.
“The Court finds that the public interest is not served by applying the ordinary prohibition on remote electronic access in Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2(c) for the duration of the time that the Courthouse remains closed,” McElroy wrote.
Attorneys for both sides had two days following McElroy’s order to redact any personal information from the documents they had submitted.
The suspension ended when courts reopened.
Eliminating or modifying the rule permanently requires approval by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Advisory Committee, an appointed panel which recommends changes to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding civil cases. There are also advisory committees for federal criminal, bankruptcy and appellate courts, as well as a standing advisory committee.
More than 200 requested rule changes are pending before federal advisory committees, according to its website, including a handful related to the rule about privacy in sensitive cases. However, most requested rule changes seek to strengthen privacy protections by requiring redactions of personal information such as Social Security numbers, rather than make the information publicly available online.
“There’s a constant dialogue in the way the advisory committee works,” Margulies said.
While there have been efforts in the past to eliminate the limits on electronic access to federal court filings, they have failed to reach a “critical mass,” Margulies said.
Alawieh’s deportation case might change that.
“It’s certainly the most glaring issue of this type under the existing federal rule,” he said.
The Rhode Island Bar Association has not taken a position on the rule, said President Christopher Gontarz.
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