By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) – The Trump administration scheduled a Friday flight to bring a deported college student back from Honduras after a judge ordered her return, but she declined to board the plane after U.S. authorities said they may detain and deport her again.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a freshman at Babson College in Massachusetts, had been deported to a country she left when she was 8, after being detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport while traveling to spend Thanksgiving with her family in Texas.
The 20-year-old was flown to Honduras on November 22 despite a Massachusetts judge’s order the prior day barring her from being deported or transferred out of the state for 72 hours. A government lawyer later apologized for what he called a “mistake.”
Boston-based U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns on February 13 ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to rectify the error it made during its immigration crackdown by Friday by facilitating her return.
Lopez Belloza told reporters she had been excited to learn on Thursday the administration had arranged for a flight to take her home.
“Hours later, that excitement turned into a nightmare,” Lopez Belloza said.
She said a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer misled her by repeatedly telling her on Thursday that if she boarded the plane, she would be released upon landing in the United States.
“I believed him for a second,” she said. “I pictured stepping off of the plane and finally being free.”
Yet in court filings on Thursday afternoon, the administration said it planned to move to deport her again once she arrived. It said it had the authority to detain her if she took the ICE flight from Honduras to Texas because she was already subject to a final order of removal, which was issued when she was 11.
“I won’t mince words,” Lopez Belloza said during a virtual press conference. “I am angry. I am sad.”
Todd Pomerleau, Lopez Belloza’s lawyer, accused the administration of “gamesmanship” and vowed to continue her legal fight.
“I’m not stopping until she’s back here, but she’s not coming back in handcuffs,” he said.
In a court filing later on Friday, the administration said Lopez Belloza failed to appear for a pre-arranged meeting to assist with her departure and did not board the scheduled flight after previously agreeing to come to an airport in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Leah Foley, whose office has been fighting Lopez Belloza’s legal challenge, in a statement said the ICE-arranged flight was intended to restore the “status quo.”
“The status quo that existed prior to her removal was that she was subject to a final order of removal and as the government argued throughout this case, ICE has statutory authority to detain an individual to effectuate such removal,” the spokesperson, Christina Sterling, said.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Ethan Smith)
