Any Lucia López Belloza, who was a freshman at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., said she was shocked that a federal prosecutor admitted this week that the Trump administration made a mistake when it deported her to Honduras as she was trying to fly home to Texas for Thanksgiving.
Now, she hopes the government will actually allow her to return to the United States, although a Homeland Security spokeswoman on Friday strongly defended the government’s actions when it deported her in November.
Since then, Ms. López, 19, has been watching anxiously as her court case plays out in Boston, thousands of miles away from her grandparents’ home in Honduras, where she has been living.
If she can come back to the United States, she said she hopes to see her parents in Texas and enjoy her mother’s homemade chicken and tortillas. But above all, she said, she is desperate to return to Babson, where she was pursuing a business degree.
“I want to continue my dream,” Ms. López said in an interview on Friday. “My dream was me applying to Babson, being one of the top schools. All the hard work I did to be at Babson, I want that to pay off at the end of the day.”
Immigration authorities detained Ms. López on Nov. 20 at Boston Logan International Airport. She was flown to Honduras two days later, despite a court order signed on Nov. 21, barring her from being removed from the United States while her case was pending.
The office of the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had “full authority to arrest and detain” Ms. López based on a valid removal order entered in 2017.
Ms. López’s immigration status “remains unchanged as her removal order remains in place,” the office said.
But at a federal court hearing in Boston on Tuesday, a federal prosecutor acknowledged that an ICE officer made a mistake when the government deported Ms. López, a rare admission of error as the administration seeks to quickly ramp up deportations.
The government acknowledged that after Ms. López was moved out of Massachusetts, an ICE employee failed to activate a system that alerts other officers to deportation cases that are subject to judicial review and should be stopped, The Associated Press reported.
“On behalf of the government, we want to sincerely apologize,” the federal prosecutor, Mark Sauter, said in court, adding that the ICE employee understands “he made a mistake,” The A.P. reported. The violation was “an inadvertent mistake by one individual,” Mr. Sauter said, “not a willful act of violating a court order.”
Despite the admission, it remains unclear whether the government will allow Ms. López to return. The Trump administration has not moved to drop the case, and it has generally sought maximum authority to detain and deport noncitizens.
At the court hearing on Tuesday, Judge Richard G. Stearns indicated that he hoped to find a solution so Ms. López could return to the United States. She had a scholarship to study at Babson and had lived in the country since she was 8, when her family left Honduras, fearing for her safety as crime there rose.
On Friday, her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, filed court papers asking Judge Stearns to order the Trump administration to put forward a “detailed remedial action plan” explaining the steps it will take to facilitate her return to the United States.
“We’re going to accept the apology for what it is,” Mr. Pomerleau said. “But an apology lacking a remedy does nothing for her.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on Friday that Ms. López had entered the country in 2014 and an immigration judge had issued a final order for her removal.
“There was no ‘mistake,’” Ms. McLaughlin said. “The court order to stop her removal was issued after she was already removed. She received full due process, including a final order of removal from a judge.”
The Trump administration has at times contradicted court orders as it has enforced its immigration crackdown.
In March, more than 200 immigrants, including some accused by the government of being gang members, were flown to El Salvador, despite a judge’s order demanding that the planes turn back. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March was returned in June, only to face further detention and deportation threats.
Ms. López said she hopes her case does not follow that pattern.
“My hope is they would fix things, and I’m able to return back to Babson and be there for the rest of the spring semester,” she said. “That’s my biggest hope, is to be back at Babson because my studies just continue to grow.”
Ms. López’s family lives in Austin, Texas, where her father works as a tailor and her mother cares for her two younger siblings, who are both U.S. citizens.
Ms. López said she has dealt with sadness, depression and anxiety since she was deported, but has been buoyed by support from professors who have reached out to her.
If she is ever allowed to finish her business degree at Babson, she said, she wants to help her father open his own tailor shop.
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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