A 19-year-old college student was about to board a plane to surprise her family in Texas for Thanksgiving when she was detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport and deported to Honduras two days later, her father and her attorney said Sunday.
Student Annie Lucia Lopez Peloza’s parents took her from Honduras to the United States when she was 7 years old. Neither Lopez nor his parents knew there was an order for his deportation, his father, Francis Lopez, said in an interview Sunday. “When they arrested Ay, they informed her,” said Francis, a tailor.
He said his employer arranged and paid for his daughter’s trip to Austin, Texas, to surprise him at work.
Ani’s lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, described the murky process of obtaining information about the case, including the reasons for his deportation. He said Ayeni was deported in violation of a court order signed by a federal judge on Friday that the student cannot be deported from the United States while her case is pending.
Lopez, a freshman studying business administration at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, was about to board a Southwest Airlines flight to Texas in the early hours of November 20. Pomerleau said she was told there was a problem with her ticket, so she went to customer service and was surrounded by immigration agents.
An immigration judge ordered Ai’s deportation in 2015, when she was a child, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in an emailed statement. “She was given due process and deported to Honduras,” he said.
Pomerleau said he checked her information against the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s database and found no record of her original deportation order. He said: “So I am not convinced that she had a deportation order, and if she had an order, she should have been notified because she had absolutely no knowledge of this situation.”
After spending a night in detention in Texas on Saturday, she was put on a bus with handcuffs on her wrists, waist and ankles before being put on a flight to Honduras, Pomerleau added.
Aine lives with his grandparents in Honduras and asked his father to speak on his behalf, he said. Frances said she found it disturbing to recount the details of her deportation, particularly her detention and handcuffing.
He said that his daughter told him that she had not signed any document allowing his deportation from the United States, as some people do to avoid prolonged detention. Aye lived in Texas with her parents and two younger brothers, ages 2 and 5, before attending college.
The family immigrated nearly 12 years ago due to rampant crime and insecurity in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He added that Francis and his wife fear for their daughter because the news is filled with “deaths and killings” every week. “This is why we left.” He said the family applied for asylum, but their application was rejected and they were never told they needed to appeal to avoid a deportation order.
Francis described his daughter as organized and hardworking. “She had this responsibility — to be the first to graduate from college and be a role model for others,” said he, who sewed her suits for interviews and internships.
Now, according to Francis, Annie was devastated to be returning to the country she had left behind so long ago. He added: “She is trying to adapt to her new reality.”
Lucia López Peloza told The Boston Globe that she is worried about how to continue her studies. “I worked hard to be able to be at Babson my first semester, and this was my dream,” he said. “I’m losing everything.” A Babson College spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.
At the time the Lopez family left Honduras, migration from Central America was increasing as people, especially in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, fled violence, crime and economic stagnation.
In recent years, migration from Honduras has increased, with thousands of people joining migrant caravans and camping at the US-Mexico border. President Donald Trump has made halting immigration and expelling immigrants a central message in his election campaigns, especially as he seeks a second term.
In recent days, he has turned his attention to Honduras, where he backed a right-wing candidate in elections last weekend and sought a pardon for a former president whom many experts blame for encouraging mass migration from his country to the United States.
Current President Xiomara Castro has spent the end of her term trying to balance her commitment to immigrants in the United States without legal status — estimated to number more than 500,000 — with the need to cooperate with the Trump administration, which has been tough on leaders who do not support its agenda.
As of November 20, nearly 30,000 Hondurans have been deported this year, about 13,000 more than at the same time last year, according to Honduran government data. The country’s authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Ani’s case.
His father said he felt it was important to share his family’s grief at a time when many are facing deportation amid Trump’s crackdown on immigration. “I decided to speak out because this is a reality we are facing now,” he said.