A U.S. court has ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to expedite the return of Babson College student Any Lucia López-Belloza, who was wrongfully deported last year.
In Tuesday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns gave the government two weeks to take steps toward López-Belloza’s reinstatement.
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He claimed the order was an opportunity to right a “wrong” but did not rule out the possibility of insulting the government if it did not take the necessary steps.
“Wisdom advises that salvation may be found in admitting and correcting one’s own mistakes,” Stearns wrote.
“In this unfortunate incident, the government has made a grand admission that it was wrong. Now is the time for the government to make amends.”
Sudden trip led to deportation
Lopez-Belloza, 19, was arrested by immigration officials at Boston’s Logan Airport on November 20th.
The college freshman was preparing to board a plane home to her family in Texas to surprise them over the Thanksgiving holiday.
She later told The Associated Press that she was denied access to a lawyer after being initially detained at the airport. López-Belloza said immigration officials told her she needed to sign deportation papers first, but she refused the offer.
For the next two nights, she said, she was kept in a holding cell by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with 17 other women, without enough space to lie down.
She was then placed on a deportation flight to Texas on November 22, then to her home country of Honduras.
“I felt numb the whole time I was on the plane,” López-Belloza told The Associated Press. “I just kept asking myself, ‘Why is this happening to me?’
However, her lawyers had meanwhile obtained a court order barring her removal from Massachusetts for 72 hours. López-Belloza’s deportation violated that court order.
She has been in Honduras for the past two and a half months while legal challenges to her case proceed.
legal battle
In court, the Trump administration apologized for the mistakes made in López-Belloza’s case and acknowledged that they had been made.
Prosecutor Mark Sauter said in court: “On behalf of the government, I would like to sincerely apologize.”
But Sauter denied accusations that the government intentionally defied the 72-hour court order, saying López-Belloza’s deportation was the fault of an ICE agent and not an act of defiance of justice.
The government also argues that López-Belloza was subject to a deportation order prior to his arrest on November 20 and therefore should not be returned to the United States.
López-Belloza was brought to the United States from Honduras when she was 8 years old and was deported along with her mother in 2016.
However, the university freshman said she knew nothing about the deportation order and told the media that her previous legal representative had assured her that no deportation order had been issued.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration rejected efforts to bring López-Belloza home, even on a student visa.
In a Feb. 6 court filing, U.S. attorney Leah B. Foley said student visas are “unfeasible because the Secretary of State does not have the authority to review visa applications and issue visas.”
“In any event, it appears that the complainant is not eligible for a student visa,” Foley added. He explained that López-Belloza “will continue to be subject to detention and deportation if he returns to the United States.”
The submission ended with a warning to the court that “we refrain from ordering the defendant to restore the appellant to the status quo as this court lacks the authority.”
The Trump administration has questioned the authority of federal courts to intervene in immigration-related matters.
a series of mistakes
Critics, meanwhile, have accused the Trump administration of repeatedly failing to comply with court orders with which it disagrees.
López-Belloza’s case is not the first time an immigrant has been unfairly deported since the beginning of President Trump’s second term.
Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations and has followed through on that promise by leading a series of controversial immigration crackdowns that he says violate due process rights.
One of the most high-profile cases occurred in March 2025, when the regime wrongfully deported a Salvadoran father named Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who was living in Maryland with his wife, a U.S. citizen.
Mr. Abrego-Garcia was granted a court order in 2019 barring his removal from the United States because he could face gang violence in El Salvador.
However, he was still deported to the country and briefly detained in El Salvador’s maximum security prison, the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT).
On April 10, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego-Garcia’s reinstatement, largely upholding lower court rulings.
But the Trump administration initially maintained that Abrego-Garcia was outside the administration’s purview. Then, on June 6, the country suddenly announced Abrego García’s return, but later filed criminal charges and asked for his deportation again.
Another incident involved a Guatemalan man identified only by his initials OCG.
He was under a court protection order barring him from returning to Guatemala, fearing he would be exposed to persecution for being gay.
But the Trump administration detained him and deported him to Mexico, then to Guatemala. He then went into hiding for safety.
OCG was returned to the United States in June after a court ordered the Trump administration to expedite its return. It also said there was “a complete lack of due process” in OCG’s deportation.
López-Belloza continues to study at Babson College remotely from Honduras while awaiting the outcome of legal proceedings.
