The 19-year-old Babson College freshman had a simple plan for Thanksgiving: fly from Boston to Texas to surprise her family. Instead, she was deported to Honduras — a surprise decision that reignited debate about the country’s immigration enforcement and the future of young immigrants who have spent much of their lives in this country.
The student, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, was cleared through security at Boston’s Logan Airport and scanned her boarding pass to board her flight. But she was notified by authorities before takeoff that something was wrong and was removed from the plane. She was in federal custody within hours. She was not given any apparent reason for her detention, according to her lawyer.
Lopez Bellozo’s deportation violated a court order that was supposed to prevent her from being removed from the country — at least while the case was under review, legal filings say. She was flown first to Texas, then onward to Honduras late Saturday, despite the order. Her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, called the removal “illegitimate” and said he was seeking legal action to reverse it.
Lopez Belloza, who was raised in Texas and moved to Boston to study business at Babson College. She had already finished a semester and planned to go back after the holidays. She is the product of an ambitious family that pushed her to go to college, and the Thanksgiving trip was supposed to be a pleasant diversion — instead, it became a life-altering disruption.
In her first public comments since the deportation, she said the experience had been “terrible” and left her feeling disoriented. She said no one ever handed her a removal order or explained in plain language why she was being deported, and pushed her back to a place she barely remembers. Speaking from Honduras by phone, she said she feels as though all her hopes — for her education and future plans, and for the life she and her family have built in the U.S. — are crumbling.
Immigration experts point out that what occurred is not as unusual as one might hope: With heightened enforcement and cross-referencing of information, individuals with long-standing deportation orders (even if they were never truly informed) are at risk of being seized at airports or public checkpoints. For young immigrants who have lived under one status, the slightest paperwork mistake or a misplaced file during an office move can suddenly change everything.
Supporters and civil-rights advocates have criticized what they call a harsh, disconnected process. Many say college students working toward degrees are not in the same category as people who violate the rules of their visas. A spokeswoman for the Arizona-based advocacy group American Immigration Council called the deportation a tragic example of how “long-standing removal orders are being enforced without warning, ripping families apart on arbitrary timetables.”
For now, Lopez Belloza and her family continue to struggle through painful uncertainty. Jovial holiday plans are usurped by harried legal calls. She’ll miss the finals she was supposed to take this week, her college plans threatened with derailing indefinitely. No public statements have been made by the government agency involved, while Babson College has stated it cannot comment on individual student privacy.
The story has resonated with people in immigrant communities — and well beyond. That a young student who appears to be law-abiding and goes to school on a scholarship can be arrested and deported without warning touches on more profound questions about fairness, transparency, and the hazards inherent in the system designed to control the flow of foreigners into the United States.
It is unclear whether Lopez Belloza’s defense team will successfully argue against the removal. But whatever the resolution, her story has already served as a thick, painful reminder for families and students who thought that college, hard work, and optimism could protect them from enforcement, particularly over the holidays.
