BOSTON— An attempted holiday surprise turned into a one-way ticket out of the country after ICE agents at Logan Airport intercepted a Babson College student with a nearly decade-old removal order — a reminder that, despite what some activists claim, immigration laws do still exist.

Nineteen-year-old Any Lucia Lopez Belloca was detained on November 20 while trying to hop a flight to Texas to “surprise” her family before Thanksgiving. ICE says the surprise was mutual — agents flagged her because she was unlawfully in the country with a final order of removal dating back to June 2, 2015.

Lopez Belloca’s attorney insists she had “no idea” she’d been ordered removed at age eight, portraying her as blindsided by a system she grew up in. But ICE officials say the case is straightforward: she entered illegally from Mexico, never resolved her immigration status, and the order has been active ever since.

The student’s plans for another four cozy years at Babson reportedly evaporated the moment she was escorted to an ICE holding facility in Burlington. She phoned her family from detention before being deported to Honduras just 48 hours later, leaving her academic future and immigration prospects in limbo.

ICE defended the operation as routine enforcement — the kind of basic, by-the-book action critics often pretend doesn’t happen. “Lopez Belloca unlawfully entered the United States from Mexico,” an ICE spokesperson said, underscoring that her case wasn’t some border-line technicality but a long-standing removal order finally carried out.

Babson College rushed out a campus-wide letter assuring students the school is “supporting the student and their family,” though it acknowledged it can’t discuss the details — which, inconveniently for campus activists, happen to be public record.

Immigration attorneys now warn that getting Lopez Belloca legally back into the U.S. will be next to impossible, noting that deportation with an existing removal order triggers some of the steepest barriers in federal law. Her case, they say, is a textbook example of what happens when years of unresolved status finally catch up.

For ICE, this is the system doing what it’s supposed to do. For everyone else, it’s a reminder that immigration enforcement doesn’t take holidays — not even Thanksgiving week.