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The Lucía López Belloza had not seen her parents and two younger sisters since starting her first semester at a business college near the city of Boston in the late summer. An acquaintance gave her plane tickets so she could fly home to her family in Texas and give them a surprise for Thanksgiving.

The 19-year-old business student was already at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was informed there was an “issue” with her boarding pass; when she went to customer service, she was restrained and arrested by what she believed to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

“I thought: ‘I am going to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the shock will be that I won’t be there,’” López said.

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a legal representative. A day later, a federal judge issued an emergency order barring her deportation from the US for at least 72 hours until her court proceedings could be examined.

However the next morning, she was shackled at her hands, ankles and waist and expelled to her native Honduras, a nation which she left at the age of seven and of which she has almost no memory.

The Volatile Country She Was Deported Back To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is one of the main transit corridors for narcotics moved from South America to Mexico, and has spent decades struggling against the expanding influence of armed gangs that dominate whole districts, extort families and recruit young people. The country’s homicide rate is three times the world average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a extremely close national vote of which the ballot tally has dragged on for several days, with local politicians and analysts condemning efforts by the US president, Donald Trump, to influence Hondurans’ votes.

“It never occurred to me I would experience this tragedy,” stated López, who, since being deported on November 22nd, has been staying at her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second-largest city.

A ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ Says Legal Counsel

Her rapid expulsion – less than 48 hours after she was detained at the airport – has attracted international scrutiny as one of the starkest cases of reported abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal initiative.

“This situation is an legally dubious nightmare,” said her attorney, the Massachusetts legal representative, who has represented other high-profile ICE detention cases.

“She received no explanation why she was arrested,” added the attorney. “She was shackled like she was a hardened criminal, and then deported to Honduras with no opportunity to have a legal hearing or even consult with an lawyer,” he added.

“If that isn’t a breach of rights, I don’t know what is,” Pomerleau said.

Government Response and Juridical Contradictions

Federal officials have stated the primary target of arrests and deportations 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 civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) representative said the individual, “an undocumented individual”, was taken into custody because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an immigration judge issued a removal order from the country in 2015, over 10 years ago. She has illegally stayed in the country since.”

Her attorney said that no one was ever presented with the deportation order, and that even if it exists, a U.S. statute specifies that arrests in such cases can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is finalized – “not 10 years later,” argued Pomerleau.

“Her mum brought her here because of how horrific the circumstances were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They arrived just like the early settlers 400 years ago, for a better life and to find safety,” explained the attorney.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “faces a large out-migration issue”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a Soros justice fellow who studies deportees in the region. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, the majority heading to the US.

In 2014, when López’s family left Honduras, their city, San Pedro Sula, was considered the most violent city of the globe and their neighbourhood, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“The children and families that I have spoken with from there described a very strong presence of criminal organizations who compelled many residents to flee,” said the researcher.

Gang violence takes a particularly heavy toll on females, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras last year. Teenage girls are particularly affected, making up the largest share of female victims of sexual violence.

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

Fighting for Return and Hope

Pomerleau said they are now waiting for an formal response from the US government to the court as to why the judge's order stopping her removal was ignored.

“There is a chance the government will say: ‘Sorry, we made a mistake here, and we’re going to {bring her back|facilitate her return.’ That would be the sensible and just thing to do.

“Yet they might have a alternative stance, and that’s going to require me to make a forceful argument that the judicial ruling was disobeyed and seek a solution,” he explained.

“We’re not stopping until we she is returned”.

The student said she was trying to keep her mind occupied: “I am trying to be as optimistic and as strong as I can.

“My desire is to be able to move forward and maybe continue my studies, whether in Honduras or by finishing my semester at the university. And eventually, to be able to reunite with my parents and my family again,” she said.

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

“My primary objective in the US was always to study,” said López. “What happened to me is unjust, because we came to learn and strive, to move forward in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”