How a ‘bureaucratic mess’ led to a college student being deported from US to Honduras

A US federal judge has urged the Trump administration to issue a student visa and bring back a college student who was deported to Honduras last November.

Nineteen-year-old Any Lucia Lopez Belloza was on her way to meet her family in Texas last Thanksgiving. But her excitement turned into confusion and fear when she was arrested by federal immigration officials moments before getting on her flight on November 20.

The 19-year-old was told there was a problem with her boarding pass and on her way to customer service, she was surrounded, placed in handcuffs and dragged out of the airport, her attorney Todd Pomerleau told CNN. She was placed on a flight to Texas and then Honduras, the country where she was born.

Here is all that happened with Belloza.

What did the US court say?

On Tuesday (January 13), US District Judge Richard Stearns, during a hearing in Boston, urged the Trump administration to resolve the “bureaucratic mess” by issuing a student visa to Lopez Belloza. He raised that prospect as a “practical solution” to how to resolve a lawsuit by Any Lucia Lopez Belloza in violation of a court order.

Earlier, on November 21 after her arrest, a federal judge in Massachusetts had issued an order, barring her from being deported or transferred for 72 hours. However, by that time, Belloza had already been flown to Texas and then to Honduras on November 22.

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Assistant US Attorney Mark Sauter acknowledged the court’s order was violated, a development he blamed on a “mistake” by an officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who thought the order no longer applied and failed to properly flag it. “On behalf of the government, we want to sincerely apologise,” Sauter said.

He said there were no grounds to hold anyone in contempt, however. He called it a rare instance of the government not following an order in the over 700 cases filed in Massachusetts by migrants challenging their detention since President Donald Trump took office last year with a hardline immigration agenda.

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Stearns, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton, commended Sauter for acknowledging the mistake and asked what the remedy should be, saying, “We don’t want to lose sight that we have a real human being here.”

Todd Pomerleau urged Stearns to order the government to facilitate the return of his client and to hold officials in contempt. “The rule of law ought to matter,” Pomerleau said.

“We all recognise a mistake was made,” Stearns said. “She’s a very sympathetic person, and there should be some means to address this.”

What happened with Lucia Lopez Belloza?

Lucia Lopez Belloza was brought to the United States from Honduras by her parents when she was just eight years old. And last year, the freshman at Babson College in Boston was flying home to Austin to surprise her parents and two little sisters.

On November 20, she was travelling from Boston airport to Austin, Texas, following the end of her first semester. Just as she was about to board at Boston airport, the 19-year-old business student was stopped over an “error” on her boarding pass. She was handcuffed and arrested by the two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

She was allowed one phone call to her parents, who immediately contacted a lawyer. Her lawyer, Pomerleau, filed a lawsuit challenging her detention the next day.

A federal judge in Massachusetts issued an order on November 21 barring her from being deported or transferred out of Massachusetts for 72 hours to allow time for her case to be examined.

But by that time, Lopez Belloza had already been flown to Texas, potentially stripping Stearns’ court of jurisdiction. She was flown to Honduras on November 22.

“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” Pomerleau told T_he Guardian_. “She was shackled like she was some type of hardened criminal, and then deported to Honduras with no opportunity to have a court hearing or even talk to an attorney,” he added.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said Lopez, labelled by the department as ‘an illegal alien’, had entered the US in 2014 and was ordered to be removed by an immigration judge the following year, but remained in the country illegally.

Her lawyer said that neither Lopez nor he was ever shown the removal order, and that even if it does exist, a federal law stipulates that arrests in such cases can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is issued – “not 10 years later,” said Pomerleau.

“Her mum brought her here because of how horrific the circumstances were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the Pilgrims 400 years ago, for a better life and to escape persecution,” said the lawyer. Speaking to The Guardian, he further said, “If that isn’t unconstitutional, I don’t know what is.”

The student’s father, Francis, told the Austin American-Statesman that although his family was denied asylum, a judge had assured them they were not under deportation orders.

“I thought: ‘I was travelling to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the surprise will be that I won’t be there,’” Lopez told the Guardian.

“I never thought my life would take this turn,” Lopez said. After her deportation on November 22, she returned to her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second-largest city.

Babson College issued a statement addressing her case and saying that “our focus remains on supporting the student and their family”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said Lopez. “What happened to me isn’t fair, because we went there to study and work hard, to move forward in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”

What are some similar cases?

Earlier, the Trump administration deported a 73-year-old Sikh woman, Harjit Kaur, to India. Her lawyer, Deepak Ahluwalia, revealed in an Instagram post that she was placed on a chartered flight without any prior notice, given no chance to say goodbye, and subjected to harsh conditions during the journey.

Kilmar Ábrego García was also among the many who were deported by the ICE. He was ‘mistakenly’ deported to EL Salvador and sent to a high-security prison meant for gang members and terrorists. He was later released while the judge reprimanded the government’s handling of the case.

With inputs from agencies