Deported Babson College student’s case dismissed after she declined flight back to U.S.
A Babson College student deported to Honduras during Thanksgiving saw her civil lawsuit against the Trump administration dismissed after she declined a flight back to the United States.
Any Lucia Lopez Belloza was taken into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at Logan Airport on Nov. 20, 2025, before she boarded a flight to Texas to surprise her family over the holiday break.
She was deported to Honduras, a move the government called a "mistake," and a federal judge ordered her return scheduled last month.
Lopez Belloza did not board a flight back to the U.S., however, after receiving conflicting information from federal officials, according to her attorney Todd Pomerleau.
U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns granted the government's motion to dismiss her lawsuit on Friday, stating that the court no longer had jurisdiction since Lopez Belloza declined the flight.
"The sad truth is that when Any declined the flight she also waived this court's only remaining basis for jurisdiction," Stearns wrote. "Any civil contempt dissolved when the government complied with the facilitation order."
Lopez Belloza's lawsuit, a habeas corpus petition, sought to challenge her detention by ICE.
The judge also wrote that her legal team missed a window to file her lawsuit in Massachusetts before she was moved to a detention facility in Texas.
"Counsel was hired the same day she was detained and had ample opportunity to file a petition in Massachusetts," the judge wrote.
Pomerleau filed a notice to appeal the judge's ruling.
Lopez Belloza came to the U.S. when she was 8 and was unaware there was a final order of removal for her when she was 11, according to her attorney.
The day after her detention, she was flown to Texas with ICE agents. That evening, a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered ICE not to remove her from the U.S. for at least 72 hours.
Despite that order, on Nov. 22, 2025, Lopez Belloza was placed on a flight to Honduras, where she was dropped off on the tarmac and left to locate family she hadn't seen in over a decade.
Lopez Belloza, her attorney and advocates described the government's attempts to return her to the U.S. as a "trap" to re-detain her and deport her again — a claim that the federal judge rejected.
"The court does not credit the suggestion that respondents, having just remedied their prior violation of the court's order by returning Any to the United States, would have immediately violated the order again by removing Any from the country without the requisite advance notice," Stearns wrote.
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