PBS News Hour White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez had an eventful Monday show. Within the span of two minutes, she managed to omit that a recently deported visa holder admitted to attending Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's funeral and interviewed Law Professor Kim Wehle, who suggested Trump’s immigration policies writ large should merit a third impeachment.
Barron-Lopez was reporting on Dr. Rasha Alawieh when she reported, “She’s a kidney transplant at Brown University, an H-1B visa holder from Lebanon, and she was deported last week when returning from visiting family. Now, prosecutors allege she had quote, ‘sympathetic photos of Hezbollah leaders’ and I spoke to Dr. George Bayliss who works with Dr. Alawieh in the kidney transplant department and he said that her deportation has disrupted the clinic and he fears what this could mean for other immigrant doctors as well as that pipeline of immigrant doctors who come to train in the U.S.”
Not only did Barron-Lopez leave out the fact that Alawiegh attended Nasrallah’s funeral, she also left out that she also had photos of Iran’s supreme leader.
Nevertheless, host Geoff Bennett wondered, “So what does this all mean for this confrontation, some would say crisis, that we're seeing now as it relates to President Trump and the judiciary?”
Barron-Lopez then switched to Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador and his battles with the courts, “So, when we zoom out, Geoff, I spoke to Kim Wehle. She's a constitutional scholar with the University of Baltimore. And she already believed that the country was in a constitutional crisis, but that Trump's actions this weekend make it worse.”
In a video, Wehle declared, “I think we're in uncharted waters, because presidents up until now did not take this kind of open defiance stance against the rule of law. [jump cut] I don't think there is a way, if the president is intent on ignoring court orders for the judicial branch to do anything about it. It really would require the United States Congress to step in with impeachment.”
Back in the studio, Barron-Lopez added, “So, the legal experts that I spoke to, whether it's Wehle or immigration experts, agree that gang members who have been convicted should certainly be deported, but that due process is key here.”
Tying both subjects together, Barron-Lopez concluded, “So whether it's across the Alien Enemies Act deportations or these deportations and detentions of legal immigrants, Wehle and immigration legal experts that I spoke to say that the Trump administration is trying to avoid due process for undocumented people, as well as those legally here. And Wehle said that, without that right, that makes the Trump administration both the judge and the jury.”
In that case, Barron-Lopez should have talked to a more diverse set of experts.
Here is a transcript for the March 17 show:
PBS News Hour
3/17/2025
7:10 PM ET
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Then third there is Dr. Rasha Alawieh, she’s a kidney transplant at Brown University, an H-1B visa holder from Lebanon, and she was deported last week when returning from visiting family. Now, prosecutors allege she had quote "sympathetic photos of Hezbollah leaders" and I spoke to Dr. George Bayliss who works with Dr. Alawieh in the kidney transplant department and he said that her deportation has disrupted the clinic and he fears what this could mean for other immigrant doctors as well as that pipeline of immigrant doctors who come to train in the U.S.
GEOFF BENNETT: So what does this all mean for this confrontation, some would say crisis, that we're seeing now as it relates to President Trump and the judiciary?
BARRON-LOPEZ: So, when we zoom out, Geoff, I spoke to Kim Wehle. She's a constitutional scholar with the University of Baltimore. And she already believed that the country was in a constitutional crisis, but that Trump's actions this weekend make it worse.
KIMBERLY WEHLE: I think we're in uncharted waters, because presidents up until now did not take this kind of open defiance stance against the rule of law. [jump cut] I don't think there is a way, if the president is intent on ignoring court orders for the judicial branch to do anything about it. It really would require the United States Congress to step in with impeachment.
BARRON-LOPEZ: So, the legal experts that I spoke to, whether it's Wehle or immigration experts, agree that gang members who have been convicted should certainly be deported, but that due process is key here.
So whether it's across the Alien Enemies Act deportations or these deportations and detentions of legal immigrants, Wehle and immigration legal experts that I spoke to say that the Trump administration is trying to avoid due process for undocumented people, as well as those legally here. And Wehle said that, without that right, that makes the Trump administration both the judge and the jury.
