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What was meant to be a surprise trip to spend Thanksgiving with her family ended in a dramatic deportation: the university student Any Lucía López Belloza, 19 years old, was arrested at Boston airport and expelled from the country in less than 48 hours, despite a federal order prohibiting her deportation while her case was under review in the courts.
The case, revealed by CNN, has caused an uproar due to the way the young woman —a freshman at Babson College, a prestigious business school— was treated by immigration authorities.
López Belloza had planned to travel to Texas to surprise her parents and younger sisters on November 20, when federal agents detained her claiming an issue with her boarding pass.
According to her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, while walking toward customer service, she was surrounded, handcuffed, and dragged out of the airport. Minutes later, she was taken to an office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Deported despite a federal court order
In the following 48 hours, López Belloza was sent to Texas and later deported to Honduras, the country where she was born and which she had not visited since she was 7 years old, when her family arrived in the United States to seek asylum, reported the mentioned outlet.
All of this, according to his defense, violated a federal court order that blocked his deportation while a lawsuit regarding his arrest was being evaluated.
The Department of Homeland Security stated to CNN that a deportation order was issued in 2015, and that López Belloza "has remained illegally in the country since then." However, Pomerleau maintains that there is no evidence of such an order, and claims that official records show the case was closed in 2017.
"I'm still not convinced that I ever had a deportation order... no evidence was shown to me," he stated.
Transfer in chains and accelerated expulsion
The student went through several detention centers in Massachusetts and Texas, where she was handcuffed and shackled before being sent to Honduras.
“She was put on a plane and deported to a country where she had not been in 12 years. It is unacceptable,” her lawyer reported to CNN.
An interrupted academic dream
López Belloza was in his first semester at Babson College on a scholarship. He had chosen this career to help his father—who is raising his two younger sisters in Texas—open his own tailoring shop someday.
"He made suits by hand for her to wear to interviews and go to internships," Pomerleau recounted.
The young woman hoped to embrace her family and share with them her academic achievements, but today she finds herself at her grandparents' home in San Pedro Sula, while her educational future remains in limbo.
"I have worked very hard to be able to attend Babson. That was my dream," he said to The Boston Globe.
López Belloza's defense is preparing an appeal to demand her return to the country. “We are going to ask the federal judge to order her return, as this is a flagrant violation of her right to due process,” Pomerleau warned.
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