{"id":411065,"date":"2026-01-16T14:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/411065\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T14:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T14:59:07","slug":"trump-administration-says-detaining-college-student-trying-to-surprise-family-was-a-mistake-us-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/411065\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump administration says detaining college student trying to surprise family was a \u2018mistake\u2019 | US immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trump administration<\/a> apologized in court for a \u201cmistake\u201d in the deportation<\/a> of a Massachusetts college student who was detained trying to fly home to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

But the administration still argued that the federal government error should not affect her immigration<\/a> case.<\/p>\n

Any Luc\u00eda L\u00f3pez Belloza, a 19-year-old freshman at Babson College in Wellesley, 15 miles west of Boston, was detained at the city\u2019s airport on 20 November and flown to Honduras two days later. Her sudden removal came despite an emergency court order on 21 November directing the government to keep her in Massachusetts<\/a> or elsewhere in the United States for at least 72 hours for legal processes.<\/p>\n

L\u00f3pez Belloza, whose family emigrated from Honduras to the US in 2014 when she was seven, is currently staying with grandparents and studying remotely. She is not detained and was recently visiting an aunt in El Salvador. In early December, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE<\/a>) officers reportedly turned up<\/a> at her parents\u2019 home in Austin, Texas and behaved aggressively towards the family but left without taking further action.<\/p>\n

At a federal court hearing on Tuesday of this week in Boston, the government argued the court lacks jurisdiction in the case because lawyers for L\u00f3pez Belloza filed their action several hours after she was taken to Texas<\/a> on the way out of the US in November. But the government also acknowledged it violated the judge\u2019s order.<\/p>\n

In court filings and in open court, government lawyers said an ICE deportation officer mistakenly believed the order no longer applied and he failed to activate a system that alerts other ICE officers that a case is subject to judicial review and that removal should be halted.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn behalf of the government, we want to sincerely apologize,\u201d said Mark Sauter, assistant US attorney, to the judge, saying the employee understands \u201che made a mistake\u201d. The violation, Sauter added, was \u201can inadvertent mistake by one individual, not a willful act of violating a court order\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a declaration filed with the court on 2 January, the ICE officer also admitted he did not notify ICE\u2019s enforcement office in Port Isabel, Texas, that the removal mission needed to be canceled. He said he believed the judge\u2019s order did not apply once L\u00f3pez Belloza was no longer in the state.<\/p>\n

The government maintains, however, that her deportation was lawful because an immigration judge ordered the removal of L\u00f3pez Belloza and her mother in 2016, and the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal in 2017. Prosecutors said she could have pursued additional appeals or sought a stay of removal.<\/p>\n

Her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, countered that she was deported in clear violation of the 21 November order and said the government\u2019s actions deprived her of due process. \u201cI was hoping the government would show some leniency and bring her back,\u201d he said. \u201cThey violated a court order.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal Judge Richard Stearns said he appreciated the government acknowledging the error, calling it a \u201ctragic\u201d bureaucratic mistake. But he appeared to rule out holding the government in contempt, noting the violation did not appear intentional. He also questioned whether he has jurisdiction over the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might not be anybody\u2019s fault, but she was the victim of it,\u201d Stearns said, adding at one point that Lopez Belloza could explore applying for a student visa.<\/p>\n

Pomerleau said one resolution would be allowing L\u00f3pez Belloza to return to finish her studies while he works to reopen the underlying removal order.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration apologized in court for a \u201cmistake\u201d in the deportation of a Massachusetts college student who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-411065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}