Immigration Story: Another ICE Casualty

I usually don’t like to focus on one particular situation because it’s easy to generalize, but sometimes, stories are important for context. When I say that ICE is NOT taking the “worst of the worst” as promised, this story is a prime example of the immense harm they are inflicting on people, which is in turn making us collectively worse as a nation.

Nineteen year old college student Lucia Lopez Belloza was excited to fly home to Austin, Texas to surprise her parents for Thanksgiving. While awaiting her flight at Logan International Airport in Boston, this Babson College student was detained by ICE, taken into custody, and within two days sent to first Texas, and then Honduras.

Lucia was just 7 years old when she came to America, yet ICE “claimed” that she was ordered to be deported in 2015, when she was just 10 years old. Lucia’s lawyer, however, found no such order in the records. It’s not a stretch to say she was profiled at the airport and “fake” charges prompted her arrest.

The day after her arrest, a federal judge ordered that she remain in the country for 72 hours to investigate the issue -- but ICE just couldn’t wait. They deported her quickly, and now she is in Honduras, living with grandparents. No college, no parents, unfamiliar country. Hopes and dreams of studying business shattered.

Many stories like this are occurring all over the the country, and Donald Trump, Kristin Noem, and ICE agents are the blame.