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AMY GOODMAN: Well, attorney Todd Pomerleau, we have one last question to ask you about another of your clients, Any Lucía López Belloza, this 19-year-old Babson College freshman, arrested last month at Boston airport when she was at the gate. She was going to surprise her family for Thanksgiving in Texas, but she was deported to Honduras. She spoke to MS NOW about how her lawyers tried to stop the deportation, to no avail.
ANY LUCÍA LÓPEZ BELLOZA: Hours passed, and even the night passed. And in the morning, that’s where I found out that I was — that they were going to transfer me to Texas. And I was like, “Oh, like, can we call, like, my family, so I can let them know?” They didn’t allow me to. So, I didn’t even know that I had — that my lawyer had put it — order so I wouldn’t be able to — so that ICE couldn’t move me to Texas. … And it hurt me, because I wasn’t able to let them know that I was going to get deported. And I didn’t even know that I was going to get deported until I was on the plane.
AMY GOODMAN: So, attorney Todd Pomerleau, the Trump administration says your client missed multiple opportunities to fight a removal order. But she came to the U.S. as a 7-year-old asylum seeker. DHS spokeswoman McLaughlin said she received full due process. But she was unaware of her prior removal order — is that right? — before being detained. And what did the judge say about not deporting her?
TODD POMERLEAU: Yeah, this is yet another character assassination. They are labeling a child — still, under the immigration law, under the age of 21, you’re considered a child. She came here around the age — was actually 8 years old. She came here with her mother, fleeing persecution in Honduras, seeking asylum. That’s a lawful process. And yet they call her “illegal,” again. She was legally pursuing asylum. Their lawyer explained to the mom and to Any that she had no deportation and nothing to worry about.
I got the case very late Thursday night. It was the day she was arrested. She was arrested early that morning. I got it around 10:30 that night and was looking into it. At first, I thought she was flying into the United States as a college student, possibly on an F-1 visa. And we learned the opposite. She was traveling domestically, not internationally. This is the first arrest of its kind I’ve seen, and I’ve done over 75 of these habeas cases in the last six months. Friday, we were trying to reach out to the ICE field office, to no avail. She was in a database, shown as being in their custody. And then, right around the time we started contacting them, they deleted her from the database, treating her like she wasn’t in the custody at all of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.
We filed the lawsuit at 6:00 at night. At 6:08, a federal judge issued an order preventing her deportation from the country, requiring her to have a court hearing. And then we talked to her father, and he thought she was deported on Friday, and he was crying. And then we reconnected with him on Monday. He told us, “Yes, Any was deported on Saturday from Texas,” is what he told us. And I almost fell out of my chair. This is a clear violation of a federal court order. She was not supposed to be removed from the country. She was supposed to be brought to court for her hearing, where we were challenging her detention as being unlawful under the Constitution and the statutes and regulations of the United States.
She had no idea she had a removal order. She should have been given the courtesy of talking to a lawyer, not having our office ignored, which is a repeat theme with ICE. They don’t answer their phone anymore. They don’t respond to emails. But they manage to have the time and capacity and money to arrest people 24/7. It’s really unconscionable and cruel, what they did to a child.
And we have a hearing coming up soon in the federal court. This is contemptuous conduct. The government responded last week. I thought it might have said “sorry,” or maybe they didn’t know about the court order. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. And it is doubling down, and its claim is basically that she got what she wanted. She’s not in unlawful custody anymore. So, basically, “Boo hoo, stopped complaining.” And by the way, they’re telling the judge that it ignored the judge’s order because it didn’t think the judge had the authority to issue it. That’s not the rule of law.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Todd Pomerleau, in 30 seconds, what’s happening to her family right now in Texas?
TODD POMERLEAU: Her family is being targeted now, apparently for speaking out to the press about the unlawful and unconstitutional violation of their daughter’s rights. Apparently, on Sunday, they were trying to break into the backyard of the dad’s and mom’s home without a warrant, and tried chasing the dad into his house when he was washing his car with his 2-year-old U.S. citizen toddler. This is just beyond the pale, what we’re seeing on a daily basis. And the public needs to know what is going on. They are not arresting “criminal illegal aliens,” even though they are labeling them as such. They are attacking hard-working people. And if we want to have — their whole goal is mass deportation now. With that, you’re not going to have democracy now. What we require is mass deportation defense.
AMY GOODMAN: And she was shackled and handcuffed when she was deported?
TODD POMERLEAU: That is correct. Not only did they arrest her at the airport and handcuff her and put her in a van, bring her to an ICE facility and then put her at a military base and hide her from the public and from her lawyer, the day she was deported, in Texas, she said she was taken down near the border on a bus, had shackles around her ankles, around her — chain around her waist and shackles around her wrists, and she was treated like she was going on a perp walk, like she was some type of sexual predator or hardened criminal. And then she was flown on a plane to Honduras, wasn’t allowed to make a phone call once on Friday or Saturday. And she had to find her grandparents, who she hasn’t seen in 12 years, when she got off the tarmac in Honduras,
AMY GOODMAN: Todd Pomerleau, I want to thank you for being with us, the attorney representing Any Lucía López Belloza, a Babson College freshman, deported, defying a judge’s order for her not to be sent out of the country. Thanks so much for being with us. We’ll follow these stories.
Next up, the Montgomery bus boycott started 70 years ago. What is the lesson of Rosa Parks sitting down on that bus? Was she just tired, or did she lead a life of activism that led to the desegregation of the transportation system of Alabama? Back in 20 seconds.
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AMY GOODMAN: Lila Downs.
