Boston, Massachusetts, USA: A federal judge has given the administration of President Donald Trump three weeks to correct what he described as a government error that led to the deportation of a college student to Honduras, and advised that she be issued a student visa.
On Jan. 16, US District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston set the deadline after a government attorney acknowledged earlier this week that a court order had been violated. That order should have stopped the removal of 19-year-old Any Lucia Lopez Belloza while she was traveling to Texas to spend Thanksgiving with her family.
Lopez Belloza is a Honduran citizen who entered the United States with her mother at age eight while seeking asylum. She has said she did not know she was subject to a removal order.
Stearns said there was no single remedy to ensure justice in what all parties agreed was a series of missteps that ended poorly for the student. He noted that the most straightforward option would be for the US Department of State to grant her a student visa. Alternatively, he said, he could require the administration to arrange her return to the United States and warned that the government could be held in contempt if it refused.
The judge ordered the administration to report back within 21 days on how it plans to proceed.
Lopez Belloza’s attorney, Todd Pomerleau, welcomed the decision in an email, saying it would help him work with the government to find a way to bring her back to the United States soon. The Justice Department declined to comment.
A first-year student at Babson College, Lopez Belloza was detained on Nov. 20 at Boston’s airport as she prepared to fly to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving.
Her lawyer filed suit in Massachusetts the next day challenging her detention, and a judge on Nov. 21 issued an order preventing her deportation or transfer out of the state for 72 hours. By then, however, she had already been moved to Texas. She was deported to Honduras on Nov. 22 and remains there with her grandparents.
Stearns, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, said on Jan. 16 that because Lopez Belloza was already outside Massachusetts when the lawsuit was filed, he did not have jurisdiction to hear the broader case going forward. Still, he said the government had the authority to fix what he called a tragic and avoidable violation of the court’s order.
On Jan. 13, a government lawyer apologized, saying an officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement made an error by failing to properly flag the court order, believing it no longer applied once Lopez Belloza had left Massachusetts.
