Babson College freshman awaits return after mistaken ICE deportation to Honduras

Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 19-year-old Babson College freshman, was detained by federal immigration agents at Boston’s Logan Airport on November 20 and deported to Honduras two days later, despite a Massachusetts court order that she must not leave the United States, she told the Associated Press on Friday. The U.S. government has apologized in court, acknowledging that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer mistakenly kept her name on a deportation flight list. Her attorney filed a motion Friday asking a federal judge to set a two-week deadline for the Trump administration to arrange her return.

Lopez Belloza’s case is the latest in a series of deportations carried out despite court orders, and a federal judge has urged the administration to remedy the error — outlining a visa pathway — before any further judicial action is considered.

Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 19-year-old freshman at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, was detained at Boston’s Logan Airport on November 20 as she prepared to fly home to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. She was deported to Honduras two days later, despite a Massachusetts court order barring her removal. On Friday, she spoke with the Associated Press by phone from Honduras, where she is staying with her grandparents.

“It just shocked me. I don’t know, like I was numb,” Lopez Belloza told the AP.

The U.S. government has apologized in court, acknowledging that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer mistakenly kept her name on a deportation flight list after a judge ordered that she must not leave the country. It was her first time back in Honduras since she was 8.

Attorney seeks court-ordered deadline

Lopez Belloza’s attorney, Todd Pomerleau, filed a motion Friday asking U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns to give federal officials a two-week deadline to arrange her return. The filing outlined several possible paths, including a student visa, though Pomerleau said that route would likely be complicated by Lopez Belloza’s prior removal order.

Late Friday, Stearns ruled that he lacked jurisdiction over Lopez Belloza’s habeas petition because it was filed after she had been transferred to Texas. But Stearns did not close the door on relief, urging the Trump administration to act before he contemplated issuing any court order.

“There is happily no one-size-fits-all solution for seeing that justice be done in what all agree was an amalgam of errors that ended badly for Any. Rather there is a salmagundi of options,” Stearns wrote. He noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio could issue a non-immigrant student visa “that would allow her to continue her studies at Babson College while her immigration status plays out in due course in the appropriate courts of law.”

Stearns said he “would prefer to give the government an opportunity to rectify the mistake it acknowledges having made in Any’s case before contemplating the issuance of any further order.”

Pomerleau called the ruling “excellent news,” saying his reading was that Stearns was asking the government to “come up with a solution” within three weeks. “I’m anxious to talk to the government representatives about a workable solution,” he said.

The Department of Homeland Security had not responded in court to Pomerleau’s request to bring Lopez Belloza back to the United States.

Background on the removal order

Lopez Belloza and her mother were ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2016. The Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal in 2017. The government says she missed multiple opportunities to appeal her removal order; Lopez Belloza said her previous attorney told her no removal order existed and that she never would have attempted to fly home in November had she known about it.

When a federal immigration agent at the airport told her she would need to sign a deportation document in order to speak with a lawyer, she refused. ICE then transferred her to a holding cell, where she spent two nights with 17 other women in conditions she described in court documents as too cramped to lie down and sleep.

“Those hours I was detained, it was so horrible,” she said.

On the flight to Honduras, Lopez Belloza described believing that the life she had built — studying business at a college in a wealthy Massachusetts suburb, working toward a degree that would let her open a tailoring shop with her father — might be over.

“I guess this is where my dreams are gone,” she recalled thinking. “Because in Honduras, if you want to dream big, it’s like you have to have a lot of money. You have to be rich. But in the United States, dreams are possible. You can make them happen.”

Babson College has offered her support to continue her studies remotely, which she is doing while she remains abroad.

Parents in Texas fear ICE

Lopez Belloza said her parents, who have applied for green cards, are also afraid. She said they have been targeted by ICE and fear leaving their home in Texas.

“They’re scared. They’re scared to step outside because of how everything is,” she said. “They’re traumatized. I’m traumatized.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not offer comment on her parents’ case, according to the AP.

Lopez Belloza said she has kept her spirits up by speaking regularly with her mother and maintaining her faith. “This is kind of new,” she said of her situation. “I’m just like hoping that I get back as soon as possible.”

Pattern of court-order violations

Lopez Belloza’s case follows others in which deportations were carried out despite existing court orders. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador despite a ruling that should have prevented it; the Trump administration initially resisted efforts to bring him back but eventually complied after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. In June, a Guatemalan man identified as O.C.G. was returned to the United States after a judge found his removal from Mexico likely “lacked any semblance of due process,” according to the AP. Pomerleau cited both cases in his Friday court filing.

Lopez Belloza said she is grateful for the government’s apology but said it has not softened the impact of what occurred.

“Knowing that it was a mistake, it does hurt me. Based on that mistake that they made, my life did a 360 change,” she said.