Federal judge dismisses college student's case after she was mistakenly deported to Honduras

A federal judge dismissed a college student's case after she was mistakenly deported to Honduras.

Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a freshman at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., was detained at Logan Airport on her way to visit family in Texas for Thanksgiving last year, Boston.com reported.

Belloza is originally from Honduras but grew up in Texas before moving to Massachusetts to study business in college. She had been told growing up that she had a pending immigration case, but that it was resolved in 2017.

Belloza was detained in November by federal immigration agents, then taken to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Burlington, Mass, and flown to Texas.

In violation of a court order, she was deported within days to Honduras, where she remains with her grandparents and studies at Babson remotely.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns of Massachusetts dismissed Belloza’s habeas lawsuit on Friday that sought to bring her back to the U.S. Stearns said that after the 19-year-old student declined to board a government flight back to the U.S., the jurisdiction left Boston.

“The sad truth is that when Any declined the flight she also waived this court’s only remaining basis for jurisdiction,” Stearns said. “Any civil contempt dissolved when the government complied with the facilitation order.”

Federal prosecutors acknowledged in January that they had mistakenly deported Belloza after Pomerleau requested she be kept in the U.S. for at least 72 hours, which was granted.

“I want to sincerely apologize,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sauter told the court at the time. “The government regrets that violation and acknowledges that violation.”

The Department of Homeland Security said previously that the government attempted to transport her back to the U.S. ahead of the court-ordered deadline in February, but she “failed to appear for her prearranged flight.”

Belloza's lawyer, Todd Pomerleau told Boston.com that “it was a trap,” claiming that the government wanted to take her back to Texas instead of Massachusetts, likely to deport her again.

“She would have got on the flight, and we suspect that once it was in U.S. airspace, they were going to detain her on the plane,” Pomerleau said. “They were going to fly to Texas when the courts were closed, and they were going to try to deport her starting Sunday afternoon, when the courts were closed, when she still had a case in Boston.”

The court said that it “does not credit the suggestion” that DHS would have immediately violated the previous court order and deport her again without advance notice.

Belloza’s legal team filed an appeal to keep her case in Boston, which Pomerleau said is “the only court that the case law says you have to sue in.”

“They could have agreed to certain things to get her a student visa,” Pomerleau said. “They could have easily put a stamp in her passport and left her the hell alone and let her come back to the United States, and they refused to do that.”