Lucia Lopez Belloza, a Babson College freshman who was mistakenly deported to Honduras, is again at the center of a legal standoff as a court-ordered deadline for her return approached midnight Friday. Her lawyers accused federal officials of stalling and of pressuring her to travel on a route they said could result in her detention in Texas, while the Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement attempted to comply with the court’s directive.
The dispute centers on how the government would carry out an order that a federal judge issued earlier this month, instructing officials to facilitate her return to the United States. Lopez Belloza, 19, has been studying remotely from Honduras, where she said she would stay for now as her attorneys pursue additional appeals and request continued compliance with the ruling.
“No one should have to feel this powerless. All I’m asking is for honesty and fairness,” Lopez Belloza said in comments to reporters Friday via Zoom. She said she was “asking to be treated like a human with rights,” amid ongoing disagreement over whether her return would include detention.
Her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, said his team is prepared to keep fighting the case through appeals and vowed that Lopez Belloza “is not coming back in handcuffs.” Pomerleau said in the past 24 hours the government sought to arrange a government-facilitated flight but did not clearly state whether she would be released upon arrival.
In a statement Friday, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE attempted to comply by arranging Lopez Belloza’s return to the United States, but that she “failed to appear for her prearranged flight.” The spokesperson said ICE made “multiple attempts” to contact her and declined to provide additional details, citing operational security.
The government’s account also ties the mistake to the underlying immigration history of the student. DHS said Lopez Belloza entered the country in 2014 and that an immigration judge issued a final order of removal in 2015. DHS said the court order blocking her removal was issued after she had already been removed and that she received “full due process.”
Lopez Belloza was detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport in November while trying to fly to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving, according to the reporting. She was deported to Honduras less than two days later, despite a court order barring her removal while her case was pending, and federal prosecutors later acknowledged in court that immigration authorities had mistakenly deported her.
Her lawyers and DHS each describe the timeline differently when it comes to the order that halted the removal. Pomerleau said Lopez Belloza has said she did not know she had a removal order and that she was 11 years old when the immigration case was decided. He also said that when he initially reviewed her immigration records, he did not see an active removal order reflected in the system.
In court filings in January, the government said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer failed to properly activate an alert system that would have flagged the judge’s order blocking her removal. The administration apologized for the error but argued that the mistake did not invalidate the prior removal order.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ordered the government to facilitate Lopez Belloza’s return within two weeks and said the courts—not the executive branch—must determine her rights and the legality of her removal. The deadline in that order was set to expire at midnight Friday.
Pomerleau and Lopez Belloza also challenged the government’s interpretation of Stearns’s order. Pomerleau said government filings indicate the plan could include taking her into custody after she arrives, and he argued that officials were reading the facilitation order “to the extreme” by treating the status quo as her being held in handcuffs and continuing detention in Texas.
“They’re interpreting the judge’s facilitation order to the extreme,” Pomerleau said. “The judge’s order says to facilitate her return to the United States to maintain the status quo. And in their view, the status quo is that she was in handcuffs in a jail in Texas. So they’re going to bring her back, put her in handcuffs and leave her in that same jail in Texas.”
Federal prosecutors also raised jurisdiction arguments, with government attorneys contending that the Boston federal court lacked jurisdiction to undo her removal order. As the Friday deadline approached, Lopez Belloza said she would remain in Honduras for now while her legal team continues to seek her return.