A federal judge on Friday asked the Trump administration to consider issuing a visa to a freshman at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., who was deported to Honduras in November in what the judge called “a tragic (and preventable) mistake.”
The judge, Richard G. Stearns, made the recommendation after a federal prosecutor acknowledged this week that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer made a mistake when the government deported the student, Any Lucia López Belloza, 19.
It was a rare admission of error as the Trump administration seeks to quickly ramp up deportations.
Immigration authorities detained Ms. López on Nov. 20 at Boston Logan International Airport as she prepared to fly home to Texas for Thanksgiving. 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 government later 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 federal court in Boston on Tuesday, 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.”
In an order on Friday, Judge Stearns described Ms. López as an “innocent and unsuspecting college student” and said there were several legal options the government could take to facilitate her return to the United States.
The judge wrote that he preferred to “give the government an opportunity to rectify the mistake it acknowledges having made in Any’s case before contemplating the issuance of any further order.”
As such, Judge Stearns directed the Justice Department to relay his decision to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with a recommendation that the government issue a student visa, or other comparable visa, to Ms. López.
The judge said he expected the government to respond within 21 days.
The office of the U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts said in a statement that ICE 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 in a statement on Friday, issued just before Judge Stearns released his order.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, strongly defended the government’s actions in deporting Ms. López. She said in a statement 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.
She has been watching anxiously as her court case plays out from thousands of miles away, at her grandparents’ home in Honduras, where she has been living since November.
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 wants 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.”
Her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, said on Friday that Judge Stearns was “giving the government an opportunity to fix the mistake it created.” He said he looked forward to working with federal prosecutors to “make sure that Any is coming back to America to live her dream.”
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 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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