By Nate Raymond
BOSTON, March 6 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge who had ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to facilitate the return of a college student it deported to Honduras said on Friday the “sad truth” is that her decision not to board a plane it arranged back to the United States meant her case must be dismissed.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 20-year-old freshman at Babson College in Massachusetts, declined on February 27 to board a flight arranged by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to bring her back to the United States after the administration said it would try to deport her again if she returned.
Lopez Belloza, who came to the United States from Honduras when she was 8, has said she was unaware she was subject to a final order of removal that was entered when she was 11.
Her lawyers had urged Boston-based U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns to let Lopez Belloza continue the lawsuit she filed after being detained by immigration authorities at Boston’s Logan International Airport in November while traveling to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her family in Texas.
But Stearns reaffirmed his earlier conclusion that he did not have jurisdiction to hear the case concerning her detention because by the time it was filed on November 21, she had been flown by immigration authorities to Texas.
His sole remaining basis for jurisdiction would have been to enforce an order issued by another judge just minutes after Lopez Belloza’s case was filed barring her from being deported or transferred out of Massachusetts for 72 hours. Lopez Belloza was flown from Texas to Honduras the next day despite that judicial order.
A U.S. government lawyer later apologized to Stearns for a “mistake” made by a ICE officer who failed to properly alert others in the agency about the existence of the judicial order.
Stearns on February 13 ordered the administration to rectify the error by facilitating her return to the United States. The administration last week said it would do so by having Lopez Belloza board the ICE flight from Honduras to Texas.
But the administration also said ICE planned to move to deport her again upon arrival and had the authority to detain her. Lopez Belloza said the “nightmare” situation caused her to decline to board the flight and remain in Honduras.
“The sad truth is that when Any declined the flight she also waived this court’s only remaining basis for jurisdiction,” Stearns wrote.
Stearns said had she boarded the plane, the judicial order barring her swift deportation would have remained in effect, giving her “ample opportunity” to file a new case in Texas to challenge her detention.
Todd Pomerleau, Lopez Belloza’s lawyer, said he will appeal.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
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