A federal judge in Boston has given the Trump administration three weeks to correct what he called a preventable error after a college student was deported to Honduras despite a court order meant to stop her removal.
US District Judge Richard Stearns set the 21-day deadline on Friday, saying the government should “rectify the mistake” that led to the deportation of 19-year-old Any Lucia López Belloza, a Babson College freshman. López Belloza is a Honduran national who came to the United States with her mother at age eight while seeking asylum.
“There is happily no one-size-fits-all solution for seeing that justice be done in what all agree was an amalgam of errors that ended badly for Any,” Stearns said.
Stearns suggested the most straightforward path would be for the US State Department to issue López Belloza a student visa. As an alternative, he said he could order the administration to arrange her return—warning that the government could face contempt proceedings if it refused to comply.
The judge directed the administration to report back within 21 days on how it plans to proceed. The Department of Justice declined to comment. López Belloza’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
López Belloza was arrested on 20 November at Boston’s Logan Airport as she attempted to travel to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving.
After her detention, her attorney filed suit in Massachusetts. A judge issued an order on 21 November barring her deportation or transfer out of state for 72 hours. However, by the time that order was issued, López Belloza had already been moved to Texas. She was deported to Honduras the next day and remains there with her grandparents.
Stearns said that because López Belloza was already outside Massachusetts when the lawsuit was filed, he lacks jurisdiction to continue hearing the broader case. Still, he emphasized that the government has the ability to remedy what he described as a “tragic (and preventable) mistake” in violating the court’s order.
Earlier this week, a government lawyer apologized, attributing the violation to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who failed to properly flag the court order after concluding—incorrectly—that it no longer applied once López Belloza was out of Massachusetts.
