College Student Deported to Honduras, Despite Judge’s Order Blocking Her Removal
NEED TO KNOW
- Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, 19, was flying home to Texas to surprise her parents for Thanksgiving
- The student at Babson College was detained while attempting to board her plane, her lawyer states
- She was deported to Honduras, despite a federal judge’s order blocking her deportation
A 19-year-old college student was detained in Boston and deported to Honduras — despite a federal judge’s order blocking her deportation, her lawyer states.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza was about to board a flight from Boston Logan Airport to Texas to visit her family for Thanksgiving when she was detained by Immigration Custom Enforcement (ICE) on Nov. 20, her attorney Todd Pomerleau confirmed to PEOPLE. Lopez Belloza entered the U.S. from Honduras when she was 8 years old.
Court documents obtained by PEOPLE show that U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs ordered that Lopez Belloza not be deported from the U.S. or transferred outside the state of Massachusetts.
Yet she was transferred to a detention facility on the southeast U.S.-Mexico border in Texas on Nov. 21, according to The Boston Globe. She was 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 tells PEOPLE.
“She gets surrounded, gets handcuffed, dragged out of the airport, thrown in a van, taken to the Boston field office,” Pomerleau alleges. “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.”
“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,” Pomerleau tells PEOPLE.
The attorney is the founder of Mass Deportation Defense, serving immigrants in the Greater Boston area.
Lopez Belloza is a business major at Babson College. “I have worked so hard to be able to be at Babson my first semester, that was my dream,” she said in an interview with The Boston Globe from her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. “I’m losing everything.”
She had hoped to use her business degree to help her dad open a tailoring shop.
Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, is currently working with the Lopez Belloza family on their case.
“People with final orders of removal, like this young college freshman from Babson College, are highly vulnerable,” Gupta told The Globe.
PEOPLE has reached out to Lopez Bellosa, her father Francis, Babson College, the Department of Homeland Security, and Boston Immigration Court for comment.
Read the original article on People
