By Billal RahmanShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberA Babson College freshman was detained at Logan International Airport and deported to Honduras while attempting to travel to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving, her attorney told Newsweek.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, who came to the United States from Honduras as a young child, had already passed through security when she was stopped at the gate before boarding, attorney Todd Pomerleau said.
"She was told to go talk to a customer service rep to clear it up, and when she did that, she was immediately detained, handcuffed, dragged away, put in a van, taken to the processing facility," Pomerleau said.
Newsweek reached out to Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.
Why It Matters
Thousands of migrants have been detained by the incumbent administration after President Donald Trump vowed to carry out mass deportations upon his return to the Oval Office in January. Trump pledged to deport one million migrants without legal status within a year.
What To Know
Officials did not explain the reason for Lopez Belloza's detention at the time, and she was later transported to the Burlington ICE field office before being flown to Texas, according to her attorney.
Her family lost contact with her for nearly two days before receiving a call from her on Saturday after she arrived in Honduras, a country she had not lived in since childhood, according to her attorney. She located her grandparents’ home and contacted her father shortly after, he said.
This would have been her first Thanksgiving break during college.
"She thought her case had resolved itself, and the reason she thought this is she's a college student. She's flown multiple times in the last year to visit different colleges, and she fell in love with Babson and wanted to go," Pomerleau said.
...Pomerleau said Lopez Belloza is a bright and ambitious student studying business, planning to help her father expand his tailoring business. Her father had even made her several suits to wear for internships and job interviews, the attorney added.
"She never got her day in court, and we're not going to stop until she does because this is yet another egregious violation of the due process rights of noncitizens. And it has to stop. It can't go on like this," Pomerleau said.
The attorney said that Lopez Belloza’s parents and her young siblings also live in Texas.
"She's such a remarkable young woman, so articulate," Pomerleau said.
"It's just really disgusting what they've done to her. She has two little sisters, two and five, U.S. citizens. Rather than having something to be thankful for, she was separated from her loved ones when they needed her most," he said.
A policy director at the American Immigration Council said Lopez Belloza appeared to have a 2017 removal order that she and her family did not know existed, noting that such orders can be issued in a person’s absence and mailed to outdated addresses, according to The Boston Globe.
What People Are Saying
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza's attorney, Todd Pomerleau, told Newsweek: "It's yet another travesty of immigration and justice that we're seeing here."
Ricky Soto, a close friend of the family, told The Boston Globe: “It really didn’t feel like it was real life because nothing made sense."
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