Any Lucia Lopez Belloza refuses to fly after the threat of a second deportation
Judge orders Trump administration to correct deportation mistake
Lawyer accuses administration of “gamesmanship” in immigration case
BOSTON – The Trump administration had scheduled a flight Friday to bring a deported college student back from Honduras after a judge ordered her return, but she refused to board the plane after U.S. authorities said they could detain and deport her again.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a freshman at Babson College in Massachusetts, was deported to the country she left when she was 8 after being detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport while traveling to spend Thanksgiving with her family in Texas.
The 20-year-old was flown to Honduras on Nov. 22 despite a Massachusetts judge’s order the previous day barring her from deportation or removal from the state for 72 hours. A government lawyer later apologized for what he called a “mistake”. Boston-based U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns on Feb. 13 ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to fix a mistake it made during its immigration crackdown by Friday by facilitating her return.
Lopez Belloza told reporters that she was thrilled to learn on Thursday that the administration had arranged a flight to take her home.
“A few hours later, that excitement turned into a nightmare,” Lopez Belloza said.
She said a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official misled her by repeatedly telling her on Thursday that if she boarded the plane, she would be released upon landing in the United States.
“I believed him for a second,” she said. “I imagined getting off the plane and finally being free. Still, in a court filing Thursday afternoon, the administration said it plans to move to deport her again once she arrives. She said she had the authority to detain her if she took an ICE flight from Honduras to Texas because she was already subject to a final order of removal that was issued when she was 11 years old.
“I’m not going to shoot,” Lopez Belloza said during a virtual press conference. “I’m angry. I’m sad.”
Todd Pomerleau, Lopez Belloza’s attorney, accused the administration of “gamesmanship” and vowed to continue her legal fight.
“I won’t stop until they come back here, but they don’t come back in handcuffs,” he said. In a court filing later Friday, the administration said Lopez Belloza failed to show up for a pre-arranged meeting to help with her departure and did not board a scheduled flight after previously agreeing to arrive at the airport in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Leah Foley, whose office is fighting Lopez Belloza’s legal challenge, said in a statement that the ICE-organized flight was intended to restore the “status quo.”
“The status quo that existed prior to her removal was that she was subject to a final order of removal, and as the government has argued throughout this case, ICE has the legal authority to detain an individual to carry out such removal,” spokeswoman Christina Sterling said.
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