“A visa is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is commonsense security,” DHS stated.

Representatives for Alawieh said in court documents on March 14 that she previously lived in the United States, had an active H1-B visa, and worked for Brown Medicine as an assistant professor. They said that upon returning to the U.S. from Beirut last week, she was held at Logan Airport in Boston for 36 hours before CBP flew her out of the country.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin ordered CBP on March 14 to give the court 48 hours’ notice if the agency planned to move the doctor anywhere, but Alawieh’s representatives said CBP nevertheless flew her out of the country that evening after the judge issued his order, “willfully” ignoring Sorokin’s directive.

Sorokin initially called the allegation that the Trump administration had defied his instructions “serious” and scheduled a hearing on the matter in Boston for Monday morning, according to the public court docket. However, Sorokin wrote in a subsequent order that Department of Justice attorneys provided an explanation and he would postpone the hearing for a week.

“Officers at Logan did not receive notice of the Court’s Order from their legal counsel until after Dr. Alawieh ‘had already departed the United States’ and that ‘[a]t no time would CBP not take a court order seriously or fail to abide by a court’s order,’” Sorokin wrote of the DOJ attorneys’ explanation.

The DOJ’s response is sealed, but Politico obtained the document and a transcript. The document alleged that CBP officers found out about Alawieh’s attendance at Nasrallah’s funeral from a video in her phone’s deleted items folder. She told CBP officials she worried the video would get her in trouble.

“Because I don’t want the perception. But I can’t delete everything. But I know I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not related to anything politically or militarily,” Alawieh said in the transcript.

TRUMP DHS DEBUTS PHONE APP FOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO SELF-DEPORT

Alawieh said her support for Nasrallah was strictly from a religious perspective, but CBP was unconvinced by Alawieh’s responses.

“CBP questioned Dr. Alawieh and determined that her true intentions in the United States could not be determined,” a DOJ prosecutor wrote.