A mistakenly deported Babson College student tells AP how her life turned upside down
BOSTON (AP) — As she sat on a deportation flight headed to Texas, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza kept asking herself why. She was a college student with no criminal record and no reason to believe she was at risk of being sent back to her native Honduras.
“It just shocked me. I don’t know, like I was numb,” Lopez Belloza told The Associated Press on Friday in a phone interview from Honduras, where she’s staying with her grandparents. The 19-year-old freshman at Babson College was detained at Boston’s airport on Nov. 20 as she was preparing to fly home to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. She was deported two days later, returning to Honduras for the first time since she was 8.
Although the government has apologized for a federal immigration authorities mistakenly deporting her even after a Massachusetts judge said she must not leave the U.S., her future is unclear. Her lawyer asked a federal judge on Friday to order the Trump administration to come up with a plan to return her to the U.S.
Far from home
Lopez Belloza and her mother were ordered deported several years after arriving in the United States. Although the government says she missed multiple opportunities to appeal, Lopez Belloza said her previous attorney told her there was no removal order. She insists she never would have tried to fly home in November if she’d known about it.
The hardest part of her sudden deportation has been missing the holidays with her parents, leaving her depressed and in tears at times. She worries about her mom and dad, who fear leaving their house in Texas because, according to Lopez Belloza, they’ve also been targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement despite applying for green cards.
“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 and has not responded in court to her attorney’s request to bring her back to the U.S.
Still, Lopez Belloza said she keeps her spirits up by talking regularly with her mom and maintaining her faith in God. After briefly toying with the idea of going to a university in Honduras, she has decided to stick with Babson, which has offered her support as she studies remotely.
Wondering why she was deported
To talk to a lawyer, a federal immigration agent at the airport told her she had to sign a deportation document. When she refused, they transferred her to an ICE facility holding cell with nothing more than a thermal blanket. In court documents, she described two nights packed in among 17 other women without enough room to lie down and sleep.
“Those hours I was detained, it was so horrible,” she said.
Lopez Belloza was able to make a phone call to her family before being loaded onto a plane to Texas, her last stop before leaving the country.
“I was numb the whole plane ride. I was like, ‘If this is it, then this will be it,’” she said, even as she held out hope of avoiding deportation. “I just kept questioning myself. Why is it happening to me?”
But as she boarded the flight for Honduras, her mood darkened. The life she had — living in a college dorm in a wealthy Massachusetts suburb, earning a business degree so she could 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.”
Feeling hopeful for a return
Lopez Belloza said she is “so appreciative of the apology that the government made” in court this week for the ICE officer mistakenly keeping her name on a deportation flight list despite the court order.
“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.
“I don’t know how to describe it. This is kind of new,” she added. “I’m just like hoping that I get back as soon as possible.”
Lawyer says the US government should return her
Lopez Belloza’s case is the latest involving a deportation carried out despite a court order.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador even though there was a ruling that should have prevented it. The Trump administration initially fought efforts to bring him back to the U.S. but eventually complied after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. And last June, a Guatemalan man identified as O.C.G. was returned to the U.S. after a judge found his removal from Mexico likely “lacked any semblance of due process.”
Her lawyer Todd Pomerleau referenced both cases in a court filing Friday. He wants a judge to give federal officials a two-week deadline to find a way to bring her back. The filing outlines several possible paths, including a student visa, although Pomerleau said that route would likely be complicated by her prior removal order.
Despite having violated the court order not to deport her, the government says she was lawfully deported because an immigration judge ordered her and her mother removed in 2016, and the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal in 2017.
Late Friday, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ruled that he didn’t have jurisdiction over Lopez Belloza’s habeas petition because it was filed after she had been flown to Texas. But he urged the Trump administration consider a way to remedy the mistake they made in deporting her.
“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, adding that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio could issue her 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 also said his court could order the government to quickly return Lopez Belloza to the United States but that 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 said his reading of the ruling is that it’s “excellent news” for his client because Stearns is asking that government to “come up with a solution” in the next three weeks to bring Lopez Belloza back to the country.
“I’m anxious to talk to the government representatives about a workable solution,” he added.