A 19-year-old college student who was deported the week before Thanksgiving after a federal judge blocked her expulsion said she was handcuffed and then forced to sleep on the floor at a detention center.
“I started crying because I couldn’t believe it, and spending the night there, sleeping on the floor,” Lucía López Belloza, speaking from Honduras, told ABC News Any in an exclusive interview.
López Belloza, who entered the United States from Honduras with her family when she was 8, was about to board her flight from Massachusetts to Texas last Friday to surprise her parents for the holidays when immigration authorities detained her.
“When they told me, ‘You’re coming with us’… I thought, ‘Oh, I have a plane and I literally have to be there right now.’ They’re like, ‘No, you’re not even going to get on the plane,'” Lopez Belloza said.
The college freshman told ABC News that immigration agents refused to answer her repeated questions about why she was arrested and where she was going.
Court documents obtained by ABC News show that just hours after her arrest, a federal judge ordered the government not to expel López Belloza from the United States or transfer her out of Massachusetts.
But that night she was transferred to a detention center in Texas and deported to Honduras the next day despite the court order.
Any López Belloza was deported last Friday despite a federal judge’s order blocking her expulsion.
Courtesy of Any López Belloza
“How does it feel to know that you were deported even though a judge said you shouldn’t be?” -ABC News asked.
“It feels unfair,” López Belloza said. “If there was an order, then why did everything happen to me so quickly, in three days?”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told ABC News that López Belloza had been issued a deportation order in 2015, but López Belloza said he was surprised when authorities told him about it.
“On November 20, CBP arrested Any López-Belloza, an illegal alien from Honduras, as she attempted to board a flight at Boston Logan International Airport,” the DHS spokesperson said. “This illegal alien entered the country in 2014 and was ordered removed from the country by an immigration judge in 2015, more than 10 years ago. She has remained in the country illegally ever since.”
“Illegal aliens should use the CBP Home app to fly home for free and receive a $1,000 stipend, while preserving the option to return in a legal and correct manner,” the DHS spokesperson said. “It’s an easy choice to voluntarily leave and receive a $1,000 check or stay and wait until you’re fined $1,000 a day, arrested, and deported with no way to legally return.”
López Belloza told ABC News that her parents didn’t know she was traveling to Texas for the holidays.
“They didn’t know I was at the airport,” he said. “They didn’t know anything… and I just thought… now the surprise is going to be that they arrest me. It shouldn’t have been like that.”
“I feel like I made a mistake going to the airport… I never lied to my parents like that,” she said.
López Belloza said this is the first time he has returned to Honduras since his family fled the country more than a decade ago. He said his family thinks his deportation is unfair because he has no criminal record and “was just concentrating on his studies.”
He told ABC News he was living his American dream.
Any López Belloza was deported to Honduras
Courtesy of Any López Belloza
“My parents, who worked so hard to send me to college,” he said. “And I got really good financial aid. I really got a good college that basically wanted me, and I wanted them.”
“My dream was to be in college, to fulfill not only mine but my family’s dream…to be in college, to be one of the first in my family to be there,” she said. “It was like… wow… I’m doing this. It’s happening.”
The 19-year-old was removed as part of the Trump administration’s aggressive strategy. immigration crackdown, under which half a million immigrants have been deported and at least another 1.6 million have self-deported.
When asked by ABC News what his message to President Donald Trump would be, López Belloza said, “Why are you making people who live in the United States work day and night, people like me, who are in college, making their dreams come true and getting an education?”
