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A Massachusetts A college student who was deported while trying to visit family for Thanksgiving missed several opportunities to fight a removal order issued when she was a young child, according to a government attorney.
Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 19-year-old Babson College freshman, was taken honduras two days after being detained bostonShe arrived at the airport on November 20, despite a court order on November 21 that she would remain in Massachusetts.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Souter filed a response Wednesday in the case, saying the Boston judge who issued the order lacked jurisdiction because López Belloza had already been involved in the case by then. texas While going out of the country.
Her lawyer argues that she never knew about the long-standing eviction order, let alone how to challenge it, etc. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Since he was being deported it became almost impossible to trace him.
The U.S. attorney said that although López Belloza’s case could have been transferred to Texas, it was not necessary because the government had already released him from custody in Honduras.
“ICE did not transport Petitioner to an undisclosed location or fail to disclose his whereabouts following his arrest on November 20,” Souter wrote. She said she was able to call her family that afternoon, informing them of where to file the petition, and that her transfer to Texas was to prepare for her removal, not to obscure her location.
Her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, says that after the initial house call, ICE offered no meaningful way to locate her. She said the ICE database showed she was in Massachusetts on November 20, there was no information about her whereabouts the next day, no one answered the phone at the local field office, and calls to the office were disconnected after an automated message.
“We literally have to guess not only where our customer is, but also guess why they’re being held because they don’t give us any information,” he said in a phone interview Friday.
Lopez Belloza, who now lives with her grandparents, came to the United States in 2014 at age 8 and was granted removal orders several years later. His lawyer says the order was issued “without his personal knowledge”.
According to the government, a judge ordered the removal of López Belloza and his mother in March 2016, and the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected an appeal in February 2017. Souter wrote that she could appeal to the Fifth Circuit, file a motion to reconsider or seek a stay of removal from ICE.
Pomerleau argues that those options were meaningless because López Belloza was a child and did not know they existed. Another attorney told her parents, “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “She had all these ways to win but she was living her life completely blindfolded.”
The court has given Pomerleau until December 11 to formally respond. She said her client is in shock but is working with Babson College to take her final exams and complete her freshman year remotely.
“She is an amazing young lady,” he said, “and we will make sure she has a bright future.”