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Any Lucia López Belloza had been away from her parents and two little sisters since beginning her freshman year at Babson College near the city of Boston in the late summer. A generous individual provided her with airfare so she could fly home to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The teenage business student was already at the boarding gate at Boston airport when she was told there was an “error” with her travel documents; when she reached the service desk, she was restrained and arrested by what she believed to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

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

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who contacted a lawyer. A day later, a federal judge issued an emergency order barring her deportation from the US for at least three days until her court proceedings could be examined.

But the next morning, she was shackled at her hands, feet and waist and expelled to her birth Central American nation, a nation which she left at the tender age of seven and of which she has virtually no recollection.

The Volatile Country López Was Sent Back To

Home to about eleven million people, Honduras is one of the main transit corridors for narcotics transported from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent many years struggling against the growing influence of violent cartels that control whole districts, extort families and recruit youths. The country’s murder rate is triple the world average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a knife-edge presidential election of which the vote count has been delayed for days, with officials and experts 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 residing at her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s economic hub.

An ‘Blatant Violation’ According to Her Lawyer

Her swift expulsion – under 48 hours after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn international scrutiny as one of the starkest cases of alleged abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal initiative.

“Her case is an legally dubious nightmare,” said her attorney, the Massachusetts legal representative, who has represented other notable ICE detainees.

“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” added Pomerleau. “She was shackled like she was some type of hardened criminal, and then sent to Honduras with no opportunity to have a court hearing or even talk to an attorney,” he added.

“If that isn’t unconstitutional, I don’t know what is,” Pomerleau concluded.

Official Statement and Legal Disputes

Trump administration officials repeatedly said the chief focus of arrests and deportations was individuals with serious records, but – like many others apprehended by ICE agents – López had no criminal record. Being undocumented in the US is a civil matter but a administrative violation.

A federal agency representative said the individual, “an undocumented individual”, was arrested because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an court issued a removal order from the country in 2015, over 10 years ago. She has illegally stayed in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that no one was ever shown the removal order, and that even if it exists, a federal law specifies that apprehensions in such cases can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is issued – “not 10 years later,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mum brought her here because of how horrific the conditions were in Honduras, where criminal groups were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the early settlers 400 years ago, for a brighter future and to escape persecution,” said the attorney.

Life in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a large emigration problem”, said a social science researcher, a Soros justice fellow who researches returned migrants in the region. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, most traveling to the US.

In 2014, when the student's family fled Honduras, their city, San Pedro Sula, was considered the murder capital of the globe and their neighbourhood, a specific district, was one of the most violent.

“The children and families that I have spoken with from there reported a overwhelming control of criminal organizations who forced multiple families to flee,” noted Kennedy.

Organized crime has a devastating impact on females, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras last year. Young women are especially vulnerable, making up the majority of victims of assault.

“And now you have a young woman back in a country where it’s very dangerous to be a young woman, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she added.

Fighting for Justice and Future

The student's lawyer said they are now awaiting an official explanation from the US government to the judge as to why the judge's order barring her removal was ignored.

“It’s possible the government will say: ‘Sorry, we erred 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 different approach, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the court order was disobeyed and demand a remedy,” he said.

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

López said she was trying to keep her mind occupied: “I try to be as positive and as resilient as I can.

“My desire is to be able to progress and maybe continue my studies, whether here or by finishing my semester at the college. And one day, to be able to reunite with my parents and my loved ones again,” she said.

Babson College, the institution she was enrolled at in Massachusetts, 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,” stated López. “This event to me is unjust, because we went there to learn and strive, to advance in search of that American dream so many of us had.”