The Trump administration has refused to issue a nonimmigrant student visa to a Babson College student whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrongfully deported to Honduras in November.
The administration was responding to district court judge Richard Stearns’s January order to find a “remedy” to ICE’s violation of a court order prohibiting Any Lopez Belloza’s deportation.
In a court filing Friday, the DOJ said Stearns’s suggestion that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “exercise his considerable discretion” to grant Belloza a nonimmigrant student visa so she could continue her studies was “unfeasible.”
“The secretary of State lacks the authority to adjudicate visa applications and issue visas, as such authority lies in the exclusive province of consular offices,” the filing says.
“Petitioner is certainly free to apply for a non-immigrant student visa to attempt to return to the United States but must satisfy eligibility and admissibility requirements to obtain such a visa.”
The DOJ said Stearn did not have the jurisdiction to find the government in contempt if it refused to comply with his order because ICE was acting on a final order of removal that had been in place since 2017.
Speaking to The Boston Globe last month, Belloza, who came to the U.S. with her mother when she was 8, said she didn’t know she was the subject of a deportation order.
