BOSTON (AP) — A court-ordered deadline for the U.S. government to remove a Babson College freshman wrongfully deported to Honduras is set to expire at midnight Friday, with her attorney accusing federal officials of stalling and saying she was forced to board a flight that could lead to her detention.
Her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, said his legal team was prepared to continue the case through appeals and vowed that 19-year-old Any Lucia Lopez Belloza “will not come back in handcuffs.”
Lopez Bellosa, who has no criminal record and has been studying remotely in Honduras, said she would remain there for now as her legal team continues to press for her return.
“No one should feel so powerless. All I ask for is honesty and fairness,” she told reporters via Zoom on Friday. “I demand to be treated as a human being with rights.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement attempted to comply with the court order and arrange for Lopez Bellosa to return to the United States, but she “failed to attend her scheduled flight.” The spokesperson said ICE made “multiple attempts” to contact her but declined to provide further details, citing operational security.
The Department of Homeland Security also said Lopez-Belosa entered the United States in 2014 and an immigration judge issued a final order of deportation in 2015. The agency said the court order blocking her deportation was issued after she had already been deported and 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. Less than two days later, she was deported to Honduras, a country she left when she was 7, despite a court order barring her from being deported while her case is pending. Federal prosecutors later admitted in court that immigration authorities wrongly deported her.
Lopez Belloza said she had no idea she had been served with a deportation order and was 11 years old when her immigration case was decided. Pomerleau said that when he initially reviewed her immigration record, he did not see an active deportation order reflected in the system.
In court filings in January, government lawyers said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official failed to properly activate an alert system that would have flagged a judge’s order blocking her deportation. The government apologized for the mistake but argued it did not invalidate previous deportation orders.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ordered the government to facilitate her return within two weeks, saying the courts, not the executive branch, must determine her rights and the legality of her deportation. The deadline is set to expire at midnight on Friday.
Government lawyers argued that a federal court in Boston lacked jurisdiction to vacate her deportation order.
Lopez Bellosa and her attorneys said federal officials tried to arrange a government-assisted flight to the United States in the past 24 hours but did not make it clear whether she would be released upon arrival. Pomerleau said court documents show the government plans to detain her in Texas and may seek her deportation again within days.
“They took the judge’s order to assist to the extreme,” Pomerleau said. “The judge’s order said to help her return to the United States to maintain the status quo. In their mind, the status quo is that she’s in handcuffs in a prison in Texas. So they’re bringing her back, handcuffing her, and leaving her in the same prison in Texas.”
