A 19-year-old college student has been deported to Honduras from Boston — even though a federal judge had ordered that she not be removed from the United States, according to her lawyer.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a business major at Babson College, was preparing to fly from Boston Logan Airport to Texas to visit her family for Thanksgiving when she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Nov. 20, her attorney Todd Pomerleau said. Lopez Belloza first came to the U.S. from Honduras when she was 8 years old.
According to court documents, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs had ordered that Lopez Belloza not be deported or transferred outside the state of Massachusetts.
Despite that order, Lopez Belloza was moved to a detention facility near the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas on Nov. 21, The Boston Globe reported. She was then deported to Honduras on Nov. 22.
“What they did to her is just so unconstitutional on so many levels, but she was going aboard the plane, so she already went through TSA,” Pomerleau said.
“She gets surrounded, gets handcuffed, dragged out of the airport, thrown in a van, taken to the Boston field office,” he continued. “She had no idea she had a removal order. I don’t even know that she did. And that was why we’re going to court. Show us her removal order. Let’s say she missed court, her parents missed court, her mom missed court — she might have a removal order, but 11-year-old kids aren’t responsible for the conduct of their parents.”
Pomerleau argues that the court’s order should have protected her from deportation while her case was being reviewed.
“She had protection from being removed, and she was supposed to get her day in court, and they violated her rights and denied her that opportunity. And we are not stopping until we get an answer, and I’m not stopping until I bring her back,” he said.
Pomerleau is the founder of Mass Deportation Defense, an organization that represents immigrants in the Greater Boston area.
Lopez Belloza, speaking from her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, told The Boston Globe that attending Babson had been a long-held goal. “I have worked so hard to be able to be at Babson my first semester, that was my dream,” she said. “I’m losing everything.” She had hoped to use her business degree to help her father open a tailoring shop.
Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, is working with the Lopez Belloza family on the case. “People with final orders of removal, like this young college freshman from Babson College, are highly vulnerable,” Gupta told The Globe.
