Immigration agents appeared on Sunday at the Texas home of the family of Any Lucia López Belloza, the 19-year-old college student who was recently deported to Honduras while on her way to visit them for Thanksgiving, her family reportedly said.
López Belloza, who attended Babson College in Massachusetts, was detained on 20 November at Boston airport while she was on her way to surprise her family in Austin, Texas, for the holiday. Within 48 hours she was deported to Honduras, a country she left at age seven when her family came to the US.
Her father and the family’s lawyer told the New York Times that on Sunday immigration agents appeared at their family home in Austin. Her father, Francis López, said immigration agents arrived in three unmarked vehicles. One agent, wearing a green vest marked “ERO” (Enforcement and Removal Operations), reportedly rushed toward him as he washed his car.
López said he ran into his back yard and closed a gate, but the agent forced it open and entered the yard. López said he then went inside his house and locked the back door. After about two hours, the agents left, without ever knocking on the door or attempting to communicate with the family, he said.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kristin Etter, a lawyer for the family, told the New York Times the agents “did not have any papers or any warrant out”, and said that the family’s home appeared to the be only one where the unmarked vehicles stopped.
According to the Times, the family’s petition for asylum was denied about a decade ago. The family say that were never notified of any deportation order. Immigration authorities have claimed that in 2015 an immigration judge ordered López Belloza’s removal, and that she had “illegally stayed in the country since”. Her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, has said he has has not been able to find any record of such an order, and that her deportation violated an emergency court order issued the day after her detention, barring her removal from the US for at least 72 hours while her case was reviewed.
“To be clear, the Trump administration is targeting a college student’s family because that college student spoke out about the unjust way that she was treated by the federal government” after her detention, the Democratic congressman Greg Casar, who represents the family’s district, told the New York Times.
Speaking to the Guardian last week, López Belloza, who has been staying at her grandparents’ home in northern Honduras, said: “I never thought I would go through this tragedy” and that she has been trying to keep her mind occupied.
“I try to be as positive and as strong as I can,” she said. “I want to be able to move forward and maybe continue my studies, whether here [in Honduras] or by finishing my semester at the university. And one day, to be able to see my parents and my family again.
“What happened to me isn’t fair,” she said. “Because we went there to study and work hard, to move forward in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”
