The Babson College freshman who was abruptly deported before Thanksgiving is now calling on the US government to help bring her back to into the country so she can resume her studies and reunite with her family.
In a court hearing this week, federal authorities acknowledged they were wrong to expel her after a judge had ordered them not to. The student, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, was heartened when she heard of the government’s apology, she said in an interview with the Globe.
“It makes me feel that there’s still hope,” Lopez Belloza, 19, said on Thursday in a phone call from Honduras, where she is now living with her grandparents.
Though Lopez Belloza said she accepted the apology, she has conflicting emotions about the government’s admission, she said.
“It also makes me kind of mad, because it’s like, wow — because of your mistake, my life completely changed," she said. “I got deported. And by a mistake — it’s crazy."
Lopez Belloza was planning to surprise her parents by flying home to Texas for Thanksgiving. But shortly after showing her ticket to a gate agent at Logan airport, she was whisked away by immigration officials.
Lopez Belloza was shuffled through multiple locations in handcuffs and shackles, giving her few chances to contact her family, she said.
At the time, her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, filed for her release in Massachusetts. Then, another federal judge in Boston ordered the administration not to move her out of state or deport her. By then, though, she had already been transferred to Texas. And within about two days of her arrest, she was deported to Honduras, a country she had not been since she was a child.
ICE
Immigration and Customs Enforcement previously told the Globe in a statement that an immigration judge ordered Lopez Belloza deported in 2015 after she “unlawfully entered the United States from Mexico.”
Lopez Belloza says she was unaware a deportation order existed.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday night.
The past two months have been a battle as Lopez Belloza adjusts to life at her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula. She has gone through bouts of anxiety and depression, she said, particularly around Christmas and New Year’s, when she was used to spending the holidays surrounded by her parents and siblings. “Those days really hit me,” she said.
“At the beginning, it was so hard to even just go to sleep,” Lopez Belloza said. “I try to make my mind busy, just because lately I’ve been feeling so down.”
She spends her days trying to stay occupied, but thinks constantly about seeing her parents and sisters again one day — and returning to her life on campus in Massachusetts. She was granted a full scholarship to attend Babson beginning in the fall of 2025 , and had worked tremendously hard to get into the school, she said.
Lopez Belloza misses spending time with her roommate, grabbing pizza at Sal’s (the new pizza spot on campus), and library study sessions — which would always turn into her favorite hangouts with close friends.
“I just want to be back at Babson, that’s the dream that I want,” Lopez Belloza said. “I just want to be back at my dorm, with my roommate, my friends.”
Despite her deportation, Lopez Belloza has not stopped studying, completing her assignments remotely, though it’s much harder to focus from afar, she said. She is striving to become the first in her family to graduate from college. She has ambitions to open her own business, and help her dad, who is a tailor, run his own shop.
“I’ve always been in that kind of mindset that if I can help you, I will — and that’s the reason why I decided to [study] business," Lopez Belloza said.
Lopez Belloza’s family has also been devastated, she said. After she and her father spoke out about her deportation, including in interviews with the Globe, her family in Austin was targeted by ICE, Pomerleau and Lopez Belloza said. In December, agents staked out her family home, even bolting toward her father while he was outside, and going into the family’s backyard, according to her attorney.
When her family called her about what happened, Lopez Belloza said she “couldn’t stop crying.”
“It turned into an even worse nightmare,” Lopez Belloza told the Globe. “I never thought that this would have happened to my parents.”
Now, her family in Austin is hunkered down at home, in fear of being arrested if they step outside. Community members help bring her sister, who is 5 years old, to school.
After she was deported in November, Pomerleau filed a motion for contempt of court, and in an ensuingfederal court hearing on Tuesday, a government attorney admitted that an ICE agent misread the order to not transfer or deport her and apologized — an unusual show of contrition during the Trump administration’s aggressive campaign to rapidly deport immigrants.
The federal judge, Richard G. Stearns, pushed lawyers for the administration to find a way to let Lopez Belloza return to the United States and remain here legally.
Her deportation, Stearns said, was a “tragic case of bureaucracy going wrong. It might not be anybody’s fault, but she was the victim of it.”
On Tuesday federal authorities said they’d acted in error. “I want to sincerely apologize,” Assistant US Attorney Mark Sauter said in Boston federal court. “The government regrets that violation and acknowledges that violation.”
Pomerleau pressed authorities about the human consequences of their actions, making clear that the only acceptable remedy was to facilitate Lopez Belloza’s return.
“They’re saying they made a mistake, and they can fix it — bring her back," Pomerleau said. “She should never have been placed in handcuffs.”
Pomerleau said that he helped the family apply for a visa that could eventually lead to a green card, which could permit Lopez Belloza’s reentry into the country if DHS authorizes it.
“Respectfully, they should just be backing down,” Pomerleau said about the federal government targeting Lopez Belloza’s family in Austin. “There’s an application pending for her, her mom and her dad, that puts them on the track to having the status they all need and deserve. So there’s no reason to really to do this anymore.”
The whole family has been constantly praying that the situation will be rectified soon, Belloza Lopez said. “It’s taking a long time for me to go back home,” she said. “We still believe that, hopefully, with this apology, we’re able to work things out, and I’m able to return back to the life that I had.”
Tonya Alanez and Sean Cotter of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
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