Northern Berkshire County friends say the Lozanos were generous neighbors and hardworking employees who were going through the proper channels to gain legal residence in this country. Karina Lozano Chiriboga, left, and her husband Angel Granda, are seen on their last day in the Berkshires before being deported back to their native Ecuador on Wednesday morning. PHOTO PROVIDED Karina Lozano Chiriboga, Angel Granda and their daughter, Ariana Granda Lozano — an honor roll student at Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School — had been seeking asylum in the United States.But their claim was denied before it was ever heard and the family was deported back to Ecuador on Wednesday. The Lozanos’ deportation has shaken their Northern Berkshire community, where friends and educators say the family was doing everything they could to build a life while navigating a complex process. The case reflects broader tensions in the immigration system, where missed deadlines, limited access to reliable counsel and rapidly changing court rulings can determine whether asylum seekers ever have their claims heard. Advocates say those factors can leave families vulnerable to deportation despite ongoing legal efforts.According to court documents, the immigration attorney the Lozanos initially hired missed filing deadlines, leading a judge to vacate their case.A last-ditch effort to stay their removal in U.S. District Court met with initial success on April 24. But that order, issued by U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin, was vacated four days later. Within an hour, according to a team of friends and advocates helping the family who spoke with The Eagle, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ordered them to show up at Boston Logan International Airport at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday for their return flight to Ecuador. They had fled the South American country's sharp increase in violent organized crime two years ago. Phi Su, a Williams College assistant professor and family friend, said the family packed what they could carry into three small suitcases, said goodbye to their neighbors, and left. Su drove them to the airport. In a statement texted to Su and translated by her from Spanish to English, the family offered hope others would learn from their experience. "They came to this country looking for protection, especially for their daughter. They had no intention of the government giving them things," Su said after translating the statement. "They were trying to do things well within our system. They were prepared to work really hard to make it here." "But decisions by ICE destroyed that opportunity," the family said, according to Su's translation. "They deported [Chiriboga] before the Bureau of Immigration Affairs could respond about her case — and [Bureau of Immigration Appeals] responded with a stay of removal."While the family was in the air leaving the country, attorney Jacob Miller, who took their case for free, received word that the Bureau of Immigration Appeals had accepted the family's appeal into the record — creating a potential path for their case to continue. Whether that's possible remains to be seen, Miller said.President Donald Trump’s second administration has been increasingly aggressive in pursuing and deporting undocumented immigrants and naturalized citizens, pouring money and resources into ICE while setting arrest quotas for the agency. While ICE has said it is targeting illegal immigrants with violent criminal records, the agency has also detained and deported undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers with no criminal record.In a prepared statement, ICE said its Boston office "arrested Karina Marivel Lozano Chiriboga, an illegal alien from Ecuador," at Logan Airport on Wednesday. The agency took the family into custody and "verified removal of all family members from the United States," according to the statement.The agency said Chiriboga and her family members had entered the United States illegally on July 13, 2024, and an immigration judge ordered them removed on Dec. 5, 2025.Miller and Su took issue with two assertions in the ICE statement: That Chiraboga and her family were "arrested," and that they had entered the U.S. illegally.Miller noted that the family agreed to wear ankle bracelets — meaning ICE always knew where they were — and appeared at the airport as ordered. Angel Granda said being forced to wear an ankle bracelet affected his self esteem, given that his family had fled Ecuador for the United States to avoid being caught up in criminal activity in their home country. PHOTO PROVIDED "They presented themselves to immigration as soon as they arrived [in the U.S.] and were released into the country pending a court date," Su said. "They immediately got a lawyer."Jonathan Igoe, the executive director at BART, confirmed that a student had been deported, but declined to identify the student or verify their name, citing education privacy laws. However, a BART honor roll lists Ariana Granda Lozano a seventh grader last fall.“This is really fresh. It’s really recent,” Igoe said Thursday. “Students and faculty are finding out that a student who was well-loved and a great person is not part of our community any longer. That’s really hard.”And now, as the school provides counseling for scared and upset students, teachers are also having to deal with a sudden loss.“Our teachers do an unbelievable job of creating a community that is welcoming and inclusive,” Igoe said. “This is difficult … it’s a hard thing for them to take care of themselves as human beings who are impacted by this and be in a dual role of caring for our younger students who may have questions and uncertainty and fear about what’s happening.”Su spoke of the family's generosity through tears in a phone interview Thursday with The Eagle.“I would describe them as the kind of neighbors anyone would want,” she said.“Within two hours of getting the call from ICE, they had called their bosses to let them know they were so sorry they wouldn’t be able to come in to work and were so thankful for the opportunity,” Su said. “I asked what they wanted us to do with their car … they said ‘try to find someone in a tough situation like us who could use the car.’”Su was struck by how gracious the family was, despite what was happening to them. "They spent their last 12 hours here calling to give thanks to every single person who supported them the last few years," she said. Their last call was to a neighbor they had befriended despite a language barrier. Court records show Chiriboga had sought relief, claiming her prior attorney had mishandled the case, denying the family due process and an opportunity to present its case for asylum.In a court filing, Miller said the family’s previous attorney did not meet case requirements in a timely fashion, prompting the immigration judge to declare their case abandoned and order their deportation.But in an order issued March 16, U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin stayed the deportation, saying Chiriboga "faces imminent removal (likely with her minor child) to a country where she has claimed a fear of serious harm, without any judge having evaluated the merits of her claim of fear."Ecuador, once a center of relative calm in South America, has fallen victim to violence and corruption, as its Pacific Ocean ports make it a key shipping hub for Colombian and Peruvian cocaine cartels. The U.S. State Department advises “increased caution" traveling in Ecuador and has categorized numerous areas as Level 4 “do not travel” zones. As of 2025, Ecuador’s murder rate had soared from 6.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2020 to a staggering 44.5 homicides per 100,000 people — greater than Mexico, El Salvador and Honduras, according to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.Miller and Su both said the situation shows the need for effective immigration legal counsel. When immigration attorney Scott Paul Clark's license was suspended in December amid allegations he had mismanaged cases, it left his clients in the lurch, many not knowing what important steps might have been missed.Clark was not the Lozanos' attorney, they said. "After losing [Clark's] services, people need to be able to tell when things are going really badly with a lawyer," Su said. "There needs to be education around that."Miller said one solution is community-based organizations providing access to immigration lawyers that asylum-seekers can trust. "I think a lot of private attorneys are trying their best," he said, particularly given the recent surge in cases. But he noted those attorneys charge thousands of dollars for services, with little recourse if they fall short. "More could be done to make sure the quality is more uniform," he said.Both Su and Miller said they learned a great deal from the family, even though the outcome wasn't what anyone wanted. "They were some of the most lovely people I ever met and they have really been able to form such a great community," Miller said. "They really wanted to do all the right things ... they got caught in a really tough situation because of the current administration and its policies."