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The Lucia López Belloza had been separated from her mother and father and two little sisters since starting her freshman year at a business college near Boston in the late summer. A family friend provided her with airfare so she could fly home to her family in Texas and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The teenage business student was standing at the boarding gate at Logan Airport when she was told there was an “error” with her boarding pass; when she went to customer service, she was handcuffed and taken into custody by what she believed to be two federal immigration agents.

“I thought: ‘I was travelling to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the shock will be that I am not coming,’” López explained.

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

However the next morning, she was shackled at her hands, feet and torso and deported to her birth Central American nation, a nation which she left at the tender age of seven and of which she has scarcely any recollection.

A Volatile Country She Was Sent To

A nation home to about eleven million people, Honduras is one of the main trafficking routes for drugs transported from the southern continent to Mexico, and has spent decades 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 political maelstrom, with a knife-edge national vote of which the ballot tally has been delayed for days, with officials and analysts condemning repeated attempts by the US president, Donald Trump, to influence the electoral process.

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

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ Says Legal Counsel

Her swift expulsion – under two days after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn international scrutiny as one of the clearest cases of alleged abuses under Trump’s mass deportation policy.

“Her case is an unconstitutional 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,” said Pomerleau. “They restrained her like she was a dangerous felon, and then deported to Honduras with no opportunity to have a court hearing or even talk to an attorney,” he added.

“Should this not be considered a breach of rights, I don’t know what is,” Pomerleau concluded.

Official Response and Legal Disputes

Federal officials repeatedly said the primary target of enforcement actions was individuals with serious records, but – like most immigrants apprehended by immigration officers – López had a clean record. Being undocumented in the US is not a crime but a civil infraction.

A federal agency spokesperson said the individual, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody because she “entered the country in 2014 and an court ordered her removed from the country in 2015, over 10 years ago. She has remained unlawfully in the country since.”

Her attorney said that no one was ever shown the removal order, and that even if it does exist, a federal law stipulates that apprehensions in such cases can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is finalized – “not a decade after the fact,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mum came to the US because of how horrific the conditions were in Honduras, where criminal groups were killing and extorting people … They arrived just like the Pilgrims centuries ago, for a brighter future and to escape persecution,” said the lawyer.

Life in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a significant out-migration issue”, said a social science researcher, a academic who researches deportees in the region. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, most heading to the US.

In 2014, when the student's family fled Honduras, their home town, this urban center, was considered the most violent city of the globe and their community, a specific district, was one of the most violent.

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

Gang violence has a devastating impact on women, having been the main driver of femicides in Honduras last year. Young women are particularly affected, making up the majority of victims of sexual violence.

“Now you have a teenager back in a place where it’s very dangerous to be a female, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she stated.

Pursuing for Justice and Hope

The student's lawyer said they are now awaiting an formal response from the US government to the court as to why the judge's order stopping her deportation was not respected.

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

“But they might have a alternative stance, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the court order was violated and demand a remedy,” he explained.

“We will not cease until we get her back”.

The student said she was attempting to stay focused: “I try to be as positive and as resilient as I can.

“I want to be able to progress and perhaps continue my studies, whether here or by completing my semester at the college. And one day, to be able to reunite with my family and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

Babson College, the school she was attending in Massachusetts, issued a statement addressing her situation and saying that “our focus remains on supporting the individual and their family”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said López. “This event to me is unjust, because we went there to learn and strive, to move forward in pursuit of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”