BOSTON (AP) — As she sat on a deportation flight headed to Texas, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza kept asking herself why. She was a college student with no criminal record and no reason to believe she was at risk
of being sent back to her native Honduras.
“It just shocked me. I don’t know, like I was numb,” Lopez Belloza told The Associated Press on Friday in a phone interview from Honduras, where she's staying with her grandparents. The 19-year-old freshman at Babson College was detained at Boston’s airport on Nov. 20 as she was preparing to fly home to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving. She was deported two days later, returning to Honduras for the first time since she was 8.
Although the government has apologized for a federal immigration employee mistakenly deporting her even after a Massachusetts judge ordered that she remain in the U.S., her future is unclear.
Lopez Belloza and he mother were ordered deported several years after arriving in the United States. Although the government says she missed multiple opportunities to appeal, Lopez Belloza said her previous attorney told her there was no removal order, and she never would have tried to fly home in November if she'd known about it.
She was able to make a phone call to her family before being loaded onto a plane to Texas, her last stop before leaving the country.
“I was numb the whole plane ride. I was like, ‘If this is it, then this will be it,’ Lopez Belloza said, even as she kept hoping for a reprieve. "Why is this happening to me? I just kept questioning myself. Why is it happening to me?”
But as she boarded the flight for Honduras, Lopez Belloza admitted her mood darkened. She started to consider that the life she had — living in a college dorm in a wealthy Massachusetts suburb, earning a business degree so she could open a tailoring shop with her father — might be over.
“I guess this is where my dreams are gone," she recalled thinking. "Because in Honduras, if you want to dream big, it’s like you have to have a lot of money. You have to be rich. But in the United States, dreams are possible. You can make them happen.”
Two months later, Lopez Belloza said she was encouraged by this week's court hearing in which a Trump administration lawyer apologized for violating the court order.
“I have like, a lot of hope,” she said, adding that she was “so appreciative of the apology that the government made.” But she admitted the mistake has turned her life upside down.
“Those hours I was detained, it was so horrible,” she said. “Knowing that it was a mistake, it does hurt me. Based on that mistake that they made, my life did a 360 change.”
Lopez Belloza's case is the latest involving a deportation carried out despite a court order.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador even though there was a ruling that should have prevented it. The Trump administration initially fought efforts to bring him back to the U.S. but eventually complied after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. And last June, a Guatemalan man identified as O.C.G. was returned to the U.S. after a judge found his removal from Mexico likely “lacked any semblance of due process.”
Her lawyer referenced both cases in a court filing Friday asking a federal judge to order the Trump administration to come up with a plan to return her to the U.S.
“Petitioner is not asking this court to micromanage foreign affairs or dictate outcomes beyond the Government’s power,” attorney Todd Pomerleau wrote. He urged the judge to order federal officials to identify available steps across the Department of Homeland Security, and if needed the State Department, within 14 days.
The filing outlines several possible paths, including allowing Lopez Belloza to return temporarily to restore her “status quo” before deportation and pursue immigration proceedings. Other options include continuing to seek a pending T visa, which are for victims of human trafficking, or applying for a student visa. However, Pomerleau said the student visa route would likely be complicated by her prior removal order and related legal barriers.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite having violated the court order, the government says she was lawfully deported because an immigration judge ordered her and her mother removed in 2016, and the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal in 2017. Prosecutors say she could have pursued additional appeals or sought a stay of removal.
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns said he appreciated the government acknowledging its error, calling it a “tragic” bureaucratic mistake. But he appeared to rule out holding the government in contempt, noting the violation did not appear intentional. He also questioned whether he has jurisdiction over the case, appearing to side with the government in concluding the court order had been filed several hours after she had been sent to Texas.
Regardless, Lopez Belloza’s attorney insists she was deprived of due process.
“I was hoping the government would show some leniency," he said in court Tuesday, "and bring her back.”
