Judge Urges Visa for Wrongfully Deported Babson Student

A federal judge recommended Friday that the Trump administration issue a student visa to a Babson College freshman whom ICE agents wrongfully deported to Honduras as she was traveling home to Texas for Thanksgiving, The Boston Globe reported.

An assistant U.S. attorney for the Trump administration apologized last week for deporting Any Lucia Lopez Belloza on Nov. 22, despite a court order prohibiting such a move that had been issued the day before.

“The United States, to its credit, apologized to Any and the court at a January 13, 2026 hearing for what it agrees was a tragic (and preventable) mistake,” district court judge Richard Stearns wrote in his ruling last week. However, “there remains the issue of a remedy.”

Stearns suggested that the “simplest solution” would be for Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “exercise his considerable discretion” and grant Lopez Belloza a nonimmigrant student visa so she could continue her studies at Babson “while her immigration status plays out in due course in the appropriate courts of law.”

Lopez Belloza came to the United States when she was 8 with her mother, whose appeal for asylum was eventually denied. In 2017, she became the subject of a deportation order, which she did not know about, according to the Globe.

Stearns has given the Trump administration 21 days to respond.

In the meantime, Lopez Belloza is continuing her classes remotely from Honduras, where she is staying with her grandparents. She told the Globe that while she accepts the government’s apology, “It also makes me kind of mad, because it’s like, wow—because of your mistake, my life completely changed.”