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Any Lucía López Belloza had been separated from her mother and father and two little sisters since beginning her freshman year at Babson College near Boston in the late summer. A generous individual gave her plane tickets so she could travel back to her family in Texas and give them a surprise for the holiday gathering.

The 19-year-old business student was standing at the departure gate at Boston airport when she was told there was an “issue” with her travel documents; when she reached customer service, she was handcuffed and arrested by what she believed to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

“My thought was: ‘I am going to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the shock will be that I am not coming,’” the student stated.

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. The next day, a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting her removal from the US for at least three days until her case could be examined.

However the following day, she was shackled at her wrists, ankles and torso and forcibly removed to her native Honduras, a nation which she left at the tender age of seven and of which she has scarcely any memory.

A Dangerous Country López Was Sent Back To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a key transit corridors for narcotics moved from the southern continent to Mexico, and has spent many years struggling against the expanding power of violent cartels that dominate whole districts, terrorize families and enlist youths. The country’s homicide rate is triple the world average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a knife-edge presidential election of which the ballot tally has dragged on for days, with local politicians and experts criticising efforts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to influence the electoral process.

“I never thought I would go through such an ordeal,” said the young woman, who, since being deported on November 22nd, has been residing at her relatives' house in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s economic hub.

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Her Lawyer

Her rapid deportation – under two days after she was detained at the airport – has attracted international scrutiny as one of the clearest examples of reported abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal policy.

“This situation is an legally dubious nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Massachusetts Todd Pomerleau, who has defended other high-profile ICE detention cases.

“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” said the attorney. “They restrained her like she was a dangerous felon, and then sent to Honduras with no opportunity to have a court hearing or even talk to an attorney,” he continued.

“If that isn’t a breach of rights, it is hard to imagine what would be,” he concluded.

Government Statement and Legal Contradictions

Federal officials repeatedly said the chief focus of enforcement actions was individuals with serious records, but – like many others apprehended by ICE agents – the student had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is not a crime but a administrative violation.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said the individual, “an undocumented individual”, was taken into custody because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an immigration judge ordered her removed from the country in 2015, over 10 years ago. She has remained unlawfully in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that neither she nor he was ever shown the deportation order, and that even if it does exist, a U.S. statute stipulates that arrests in such cases can only take place within a three-month period after the order is finalized – “not a decade after the fact,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mum came to the US because of how terrible the circumstances were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They arrived just like the Pilgrims 400 years ago, for a brighter future and to find safety,” said the attorney.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “faces a significant out-migration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a Soros justice fellow who studies deportees in Central America. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, most heading to the US.

In that year, when López’s family fled Honduras, their home town, San Pedro Sula, was considered the murder capital of the world and their neighbourhood, a specific district, was one of the most violent.

“The children and families that I’ve interviewed from there described a overwhelming presence of gangs who compelled multiple families to flee,” said Kennedy.

Organized crime has a devastating impact on women, having been the primary cause of femicides in Honduras recently. Teenage girls are particularly affected, making up the majority of female victims of assault.

“Now you have a teenager back in a place where the risks are high to be a young woman, who was given no legal recourse in the US,” she added.

Pursuing for Justice and Hope

The student's lawyer said they are now waiting for an official explanation from the American authorities to the judge as to why the emergency order stopping her deportation was not respected.

“It’s possible the administration will say: ‘We apologize, we erred here, and we’re going to {bring her back|facilitate her return.’ That would be the easy and reasonable thing to do.

“Yet they might have a different approach, and that would necessitate me to make a forceful argument that the judicial ruling was violated and demand a remedy,” he said.

“We will not cease until we she is returned”.

López said she was trying to stay focused: “I try to be as optimistic and as strong as I can.

“My desire is to be able to progress and maybe continue my studies, whether here or by completing my term at the college. And one day, to be able to see my family and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

Her university, the institution she was enrolled at in Wellesley, issued a statement regarding her case and saying that “our focus remains on assisting the student and their family”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said she. “What happened to me isn’t fair, because we came to study and work hard, to advance in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”