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The Lucía López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since beginning her freshman year at Babson College near the city of Boston in August. An acquaintance provided her with plane tickets so she could fly home to her family in Texas and give them a surprise for the holiday gathering.

The teenage business student was already at the boarding gate at Logan Airport when she was informed there was an “issue” with her travel documents; when she reached the service desk, she was restrained and taken into custody by what she believed to be two federal immigration agents.

“I thought: ‘I am going to see 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 legal representative. A day later, a federal judge issued an injunction barring her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be reviewed.

However the next morning, she was shackled at her wrists, ankles and torso and deported to her native Honduras, a nation which she left at the age of seven and of which she has almost no recollection.

The Dangerous Country She Was Sent Back To

A nation home to about eleven million people, Honduras is a key trafficking routes for narcotics transported from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent many years grappling with the growing influence of armed gangs that control entire neighbourhoods, extort families and enlist young people. The country’s homicide rate is triple the world average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a extremely close presidential election of which the ballot tally has dragged on for days, with officials and experts criticising repeated attempts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to influence the electoral process.

“It never occurred to me I would experience such an ordeal,” stated the young woman, who, since being deported on November 22nd, has been residing at her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second-largest city.

A ‘Blatant Violation’ Says Legal Counsel

Her rapid deportation – less than two days after she was arrested at the airport – has attracted international scrutiny as one of the starkest examples of reported abuses under Trump’s mass deportation policy.

“Her case is an unconstitutional nightmare,” said her attorney, the Boston-based Todd Pomerleau, who has defended other notable ICE detention cases.

“She received no explanation why she was arrested,” said Pomerleau. “They restrained her like she was a hardened criminal, and then deported to Honduras with no opportunity to have a court hearing or even consult with an lawyer,” he added.

“Should this not be considered unconstitutional, it is hard to imagine what would be,” Pomerleau concluded.

Official Statement and Legal Contradictions

Federal officials repeatedly said the primary target of arrests and deportations was dangerous criminals, but – like most immigrants detained by immigration officers – the student had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is a civil matter but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said López, “an illegal alien”, was arrested because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an immigration judge ordered her removed from the country in 2015, a decade ago. She has illegally stayed in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that neither she nor he was ever shown the deportation order, and that even if it exists, a federal law stipulates that apprehensions in such cases can only take place within a three-month period after the order is finalized – “not a decade after the fact,” said Pomerleau.

“Her mother came to the US because of how horrific the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were murdering and threatening people … They arrived just like the Pilgrims 400 years ago, for a brighter future and to escape persecution,” said the lawyer.

Conditions in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “has a significant out-migration problem”, said a social science researcher, a Soros justice fellow who researches 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 the student's family left Honduras, their city, this urban center, was considered the most violent city of the globe and their neighbourhood, a specific district, was one of the most violent.

“Young people and households that I have spoken with from there reported a overwhelming control of gangs who forced many residents to leave,” noted the researcher.

Gang violence takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the main driver of femicides in Honduras recently. Young women are especially vulnerable, making up the majority of victims of assault.

“And now you have a young woman back in a place where it’s very dangerous to be a young woman, who was given no legal recourse in the US,” she stated.

Pursuing for Justice and Hope

The student's lawyer said they are now awaiting an official explanation from the American authorities to the court as to why the emergency order stopping her removal was ignored.

“There is a chance the administration 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.

“But they might have a different approach, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the judicial ruling was disobeyed and seek a solution,” he explained.

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

López 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 move forward and perhaps continue my studies, whether in Honduras or by finishing my semester at the university. And one day, to be able to see my parents and my family again,” she expressed.

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

“My primary objective in the US was always to pursue an education,” stated she. “This event to me isn’t fair, because we came to learn and strive, to move forward in pursuit of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”