CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Cleveland Clinic doctor who was forced to leave the United States following President Donald Trump's executive order is now suing him.
Suha Abushamma, 26, is an intern in the first year of a three-year Internal Medicine residency program at the clinic and was coming back from a trip home to Saudi Arabia to visit family when the executive order was put into effect.
After landing at JFK airport, Abushamma said she was then forced to leave the United States.
The lawsuit, filed on Saturday, alleges that Abushamma was detained for roughly nine hours during which she was not given anything to eat and wasn't allowed to speak with her lawyer. The lawsuit also says that she was misled and coerced by Customs and Border Patrol agents into
signing a form described as requiring her to return to Saudi Arabia. Agents did not tell her the form she was signing, 'Form I-275,' which would cancel her H-1B visa.
She claims agents told her "only the Supreme Court of the United State could stop her from being removed."
The lawsuit states Abushamma is currently in Saudi Arabia and continues to be impacted by her removal because she "maintains her employment as an internal medicine resident, a position that she worked very hard to obtain and that she cares about deeply, in Cleveland, Ohio. She has similarly built a life for herself in Cleveland and as such has important property interests in the areas, such as her apartment and car. Finally, Dr. Abushamma has also been separated from her fiancé who is a doctor in the United States."