Judge dismisses lawsuit of Babson student mistakenly deported

A federal judge has dismissed the lawsuit filed by a Babson student who was deported to Honduras after being detained at Logan Airport on her way to visit her family in Texas for Thanksgiving last year.

Lucia Lopez-Peloza, a senior at Babson College in Wellesley, grew up in Texas before moving to Massachusetts for college. In November, she was detained by federal immigration agents, transported to an ICE facility in Burlington, and then flown to Texas.

Within days, she was deported – in violation of a court order – to Honduras, where she remains with her grandparents.

In the US District Court in Massachusetts, Judge Richard Stearns dismissed Lopez Pelosa’s lawsuit on Friday with the aim of returning her to the United States. After the 19-year-old student refused to board a government flight back to the United States, the state left Boston, he said.

“The sad truth is that when you denied any flight, you also waived the court’s only remaining basis for its jurisdiction,” Stearns ruled. “Any civil contempt is resolved by the government’s compliance with the facilitation order.”

Her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, said federal immigration officials are using tactics such as quickly transferring detainees and not updating the government’s online detention tracker to hide detainees’ locations, making it difficult for lawyers to know where to file habeas corpus petitions to keep them in the country.

“ICE arrests people, throws them in vans, doesn’t return phone calls, doesn’t respond to emails. They lie to everyone,” Pomerleau said. “There needs to be clarity in the law. It’s not just any case. It’s more than just a case. She’s a beautiful person, but what happened to her has happened to countless others. It’s really unfair for lawyers to immediately rush in and file an incomplete lawsuit or wait for weeks on end to find out where their clients are being held.”

The judge ruled that ICE did not try to hide her location, and if she had taken the flight, it was clear she was in Texas, giving her attorney 48 hours to respond in court.

“Despite the government’s haste to eliminate any counsel’s undoubtedly frustrating attempts to locate her, there is no evidence that the government was attempting to conceal her location or her immediate guardian from counsel,” Stearns ruled, according to the court docket.

In January, federal prosecutors admitted they wrongly deported Lopez-Pelosa after Pomerleau filed and was granted an order keeping her in the United States for at least 72 hours.

“I want to sincerely apologize,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Sutter told the court at the time. “The government regrets and acknowledges this violation.”

The lawyer says the trip back to the United States was a “trap.”

Before the court-ordered deadline for her return to the United States passed in February, the government attempted to return her to the United States, but she “failed to show up for her previously scheduled flight,” the Department of Homeland Security previously said.

“It was a trap,” Pomerleau told Boston.com, saying the government wanted to return her to Texas rather than Massachusetts and would likely deport her again.

“She was going to get on the plane, and we believe that once she entered U.S. airspace, they were going to detain her on the plane,” Pomerleau said. “They were going to fly to Texas when the courts were closed, and they were going to try to deport her starting Sunday afternoon, when the courts were closed, when she still had a case in Boston.”

The court “does not believe the proposition” that DHS would have immediately violated the previous court order and deported her again without notice, the court said.

Since Lopez-Peloza has been in Honduras, she has been studying at Babson University remotely. Lopez-Peloza’s legal team filed an appeal to keep the case in Boston, which Pomerleau said is “the only court where case law says you have to file a case in.”

“They could have agreed on certain things to get her a student visa,” Pomerleau said. “They could have easily put a stamp on her passport and left her in hell alone and allowed her to return to the United States, but they refused to do so.”

Molly Farrar is a general assignment reporter for Boston.com, focusing on education, politics, crime and more.