A federal judge has closed the door on a lawsuit filed by a college student deported to Honduras after concluding that her decision not to board a flight back to the United States left the court without a legal foothold to keep the case alive.
The dispute centers on Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 20-year-old freshman at Babson College in Massachusetts. She was sent to Honduras despite a court order that briefly barred immigration authorities from removing her from the state.
The court had earlier directed the administration of Donald Trump to help bring her back after the deportation was traced to an internal mistake. Immigration authorities arranged a flight from Honduras to Texas, offering her a path back into the country.
But Lopez Belloza refused to board the aircraft on February 27.
Officials had made it clear that once she arrived in the United States, immigration authorities planned to detain her again and seek her deportation anew. Facing that possibility, she chose to remain in Honduras instead.
The judge said that decision effectively ended the case.
According to the court, the only remaining authority it had was tied to enforcing an earlier order preventing her immediate removal. If she had returned on the flight, that protection would still have been in place, giving her time to launch a fresh legal challenge in Texas. By declining the flight, the judge wrote, she surrendered the last legal basis that allowed the court to intervene.
Lopez Belloza’s immigration troubles trace back years. She moved to the United States from Honduras as a child and has said she did not realize a final deportation order had been entered against her when she was 11.
Her ordeal began last November when immigration authorities detained her at Logan International Airport while she was traveling to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with family in Texas. By the time her lawsuit was filed challenging the detention, she had already been transported out of Massachusetts.
Complicating matters further, immigration officials deported her to Honduras the day after another judge ordered authorities not to move her for 72 hours. Government lawyers later acknowledged that an officer with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to properly circulate the court’s order inside the agency, allowing the deportation to proceed.
The judge had attempted to correct that mistake by directing officials to facilitate her return. But once Lopez Belloza declined the arranged flight, the court concluded it could no longer keep the case alive.
Her legal team says the fight is not over and plans to challenge the ruling on appeal.
