A United States court has ordered the administration of President Donald Trump to facilitate the return of a Babson College student, Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, who was wrongfully deported last year.
In his ruling on Tuesday, US District Judge Richard Stearns gave the government two weeks to take steps to bring Lopez Belloza back.
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He framed the order as an opportunity to correct a “mistake” – but he did not rule out holding the government in contempt if it failed to take the necessary actions.
“Wisdom counsels that redemption may be found by acknowledging and fixing our own errors,” Stearns wrote.
“In this unfortunate case, the government commendably admits that it did wrong. Now it is time for the government to make amends.”
A surprise trip turned deportation
Lopez Belloza, 19, was arrested on November 20 by immigration agents at Boston’s Logan airport.
The college freshman had been preparing to board a flight home to her family in Texas to surprise them for the Thanksgiving holiday.
She has since told The Associated Press news agency that she was denied access to a lawyer after her initial detention at the airport. The immigration agent told her she would need to sign a deportation document first, according to Lopez Belloza, who said she denied the offer.
For the next two nights, she said she was kept by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a holding room with 17 other women, without enough room to lie down.
Then, she was loaded onto a deportation flight, which took her to Texas, then to her native Honduras, on November 22.
“I was numb the whole plane ride,” Lopez Belloza told the AP. “I just kept questioning myself. Why is it happening to me?”
Her lawyers, however, had obtained during that time a court order barring her removal from Massachusetts for 72 hours. Lopez Belloza’s deportation violated that court order.
She has remained in Honduras for the last two and a half months, while legal challenges over her case proceeded.
A legal battle
In court, the Trump administration has apologised for the error in Lopez Belloza’s case, acknowledging that a mistake was indeed made.
“On behalf of the government, we want to sincerely apologise,” prosecutor Mark Sauter told the court.
But Sauter rejected accusations that the government wilfully defied the 72-hour court order, saying that Lopez Belloza’s deportation was the mistake of one ICE agent and not an act of judicial defiance.
The government has also argued that Lopez Belloza was subject to a removal order before her November 20 arrest and therefore should not be returned to the US.
Lopez Belloza was brought to the US from Honduras when she was eight years old, and in 2016, she and her mother were o