A 19-year-old college student's plans to surprise her family for the Thanksgiving holiday ended in a draconian nightmare when she was detained at a US airport and subsequently deported to Honduras, a country she has not seen since childhood.
The Airport Detention
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a business major at the prestigious Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, was about to board a flight from Boston Logan International Airport to Austin, Texas, last Thursday. The 19-year-old had successfully passed through security and was set to visit her family when she scanned her boarding pass.
Her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, explained that she was told there was a problem with her ticket and was directed to a customer service desk. It was there that she was taken into federal custody. "They wouldn't tell her why she was being detained," Pomerleau told The Boston Globe. "She didn't understand it at all."
Lopez Belloza, who originally came to the United States in 2014 when she was just eight years old, was transported to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Burlington in an unmarked car.
A Bitter Journey and a Broken Dream
In a cruel twist of fate, the student was eventually flown to Texas on Saturday, but not for the family reunion she had envisioned. Instead, she was deported from there to Honduras. After a harrowing 48 hours, she was finally able to contact her frantic parents from her grandparents' home in San Pedro Sula.
Heartbroken at missing the holidays with her young sisters and fearful for her future, Lopez Belloza expressed her devastation. "I have worked so hard to be able to be at Babson my first semester, that was my dream," she told the Globe from Honduras. "I'm losing everything."
Pomerleau did not mince words when characterising his client's ordeal, calling her "a Dreamer living a draconian nightmare right now" and describing the tactics used as an "unconstitutional bag job."
A Hidden Removal Order and Alleged Rights Violations
The situation was compounded by the revelation that an outstanding removal order for Lopez Belloza had been in place since 2017, something she and her family were completely unaware of. Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, has been assisting the family and explained that immigration courts can issue such orders in absentia, with notifications often sent to incorrect addresses.
"[Her family] didn't know to show up somewhere, and she certainly had no idea of any of this," Gupta said, criticising the "cruel and indiscriminate deportation agenda" of the current administration.
Making the case more severe, court documents revealed that a federal judge had ordered the government not to remove Lopez Belloza from the US and not to transfer her outside of Massachusetts, instructions that appear to have been ignored.
Pomerleau emphasised that his client, as a minor under immigration law with no record, had her constitutional rights violated. "She was in a court process that she thought ended favorably, she was then nine or 10-years-old," he said. The lawyer has vowed to "fight like hell" to bring her back, as Lopez Belloza now faces the prospect of missing her college finals, scheduled for just weeks away.
