A U.S. attorney in the Trump administration apologized on Tuesday for deporting a Boston-area college student in breach of a court order over Thanksgiving.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 19-year-old freshman student at Babson College, was deported by federal immigration authorities in November. She was detained at Boston Logan International Airport on Nov. 20 while attempting to fly home to Austin, Texas, to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her family.
Following her detainment, a federal court ordered that Lopez Belloza not be removed from the United States or from Massachusetts jurisdiction within 72 hours on Nov. 21. However, federal officials deported Lopez Belloza to Honduras on Nov. 22.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sauter apologized for the deportation despite the court order, saying “the government regrets that violation and acknowledges that violation.”
“On behalf of the government, we want to sincerely apologize,” Sauter said, according to the Associated Press. He said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who facilitated Lopez Belloza’s deportation made “an inadvertent mistake,” and that the incident was “not a willful act of violating a court order.”
The Trump administration attorneys said in court that the ICE officer mistakenly thought the court order did not apply to Lopez Belloza anymore once she had touched down in Texas on her way out of the country. They also defended the deportation, according to the outlet, saying Lopez Belloza’s petition for habeas corpus in Massachusetts was filed after she was already in Texas.
DHS said in a December statement that Lopez Belloza is “an illegal alien from Honduras” who “entered the country in 2014 and an immigration judge ordered her removed from the country in 2015.”
Lopez Belloza currently remains located in Honduras, according to her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau.
In an electronic clerk’s note, the court called Lopez Belloza an “innocent victim in this case.”
“The Government forthrightly acknowledges that it made a mistake and, this incident aside, has a record of complying with stay of removal orders issued by court,” the clerk’s note reads.
The note announced that the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts “is considering means of mediating the parties’ dispute in a manner that might allow [the] petitioner to return to the country.”
The note gave several examples of possible means, including “through the issuance of a student visa (petitioner has a full scholarship to Babson College), or through the reopening of her removal case and parole or admission back into the country to address the issues.”
Federal Judge Richard G. Stearns is presiding over the case. He called the deportation incident a “tragic” mistake, according to the Associated Press.