Seattle Times reporter David Gutman wrote glowingly of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese doctor and former University of Washington fellow who was deported by the Trump administration despite having a “valid visa to live and work in the United States.” Gutman quoted her former colleagues calling her “helpful, kind and extremely professional.”

According to Gutman, Alawieh was detained on the way home from Lebanon “to visit family.” But it was more than that.

The Seattle Times wanted you to feel bad for Alawieh and view her as a victim of Trump as he “seeks to harden immigration policies and enforcement.” But you shouldn’t feel bad, based on the reason the government gave for her long overdue deportation: they say she’s a Hezbollah supporter.

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Burying the lede seems pretty intentional

It took ten paragraphs of glowing characterizations of Alawieh before Gutman notes that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) noted that the former professor traveled to Lebanon to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, who led terrorist, militant group Hezbollah and was “an archenemy of Israel, cementing alliances with Shiite religious leaders in Iran and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas,” according to the Associated Press.

DHS noted that Alawieh “openly admitted” to supporting Nasrallah and attending his funeral. The Department of Justice noted that they even found “‘sympathetic photos and videos’ of prominent Hezbollah figures in a deleted items folder on her cell phone,” per Politico. She reportedly deleted the photos “a day or two” before arriving in the United States from her trip.

“Asked if she supported Nasrallah ‘in any way,’ Alawieh initially denied doing so but later appeared to acknowledge that she supported and admired him ‘from a religious perspective,'” Politico noted.

Deserving deportation

Most normal people don’t attend funerals for religious leaders who are murderous, antisemitic terrorist thugs. It’s odd that this key detail—the actual reason the federal government provides for deportation—was buried. But both the city and the UW campus are filled with left-wing partisans happy to whitewash these kinds of stories in an effort to attack President Donald Trump’s very popular policy to deport people who don’t belong here and shouldn’t be welcome.

“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,” Homeland Security said in its statement.

They’re right.

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