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Any Lucía López Belloza had not seen her mother and father and two little sisters since beginning her first semester at Babson College near Boston in August. A family friend 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 19-year-old business student was standing at the boarding gate at Logan Airport when she was told there was an “issue” with her boarding pass; when she went to the service desk, she was handcuffed and taken into custody by what she believed to be two federal immigration agents.

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

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who contacted a lawyer. The next day, a U.S. judge issued an emergency order barring her deportation from the US for at least 72 hours until her court proceedings could be reviewed.

But the following day, she was chained at her wrists, ankles and waist and deported to her native Central American nation, a nation which she departed at the tender age of seven and of which she has almost no recollection.

A Dangerous Country She Was Sent To

A nation home to about eleven million people, Honduras is a primary transit corridors for narcotics moved from the southern continent to Mexico, and has spent many years grappling with the expanding power of violent cartels that dominate entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and recruit youths. The country’s murder rate is three times the global average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a extremely close national vote of which the ballot tally has been delayed for days, with officials and analysts criticising efforts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway Hondurans’ votes.

“It never occurred to me I would experience such an ordeal,” said López, who, since being deported on 22 November, has been residing at her relatives' house in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s economic hub.

An ‘Blatant Violation’ Says Her Lawyer

Her swift deportation – less than 48 hours after she was detained at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the starkest cases of alleged abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal policy.

“Her case is an unconstitutional horror show,” said her attorney, the Massachusetts legal representative, who has defended other notable ICE detention cases.

“She received no explanation why she was detained,” added the attorney. “They restrained her like she was some type of dangerous felon, and then sent to Honduras with no opportunity to have a legal hearing or even talk to an attorney,” he added.

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

Official Statement and Juridical Disputes

Trump administration officials repeatedly said the chief focus of arrests and deportations was individuals with serious records, but – like many others apprehended by immigration officers – López 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 illegal alien”, 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 remained unlawfully in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that neither she nor he was ever shown the removal order, and that even if it does exist, a federal law specifies 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 the lawyer.

“Her mum brought her here because of how horrific the circumstances were in Honduras, where criminal groups were killing and extorting 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 large out-migration problem”, 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, most traveling to the US.

In that year, when López’s family fled Honduras, their city, this urban center, was considered the murder capital of the world and their community, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“The children and families that I have spoken with from there reported a very strong presence of gangs who compelled multiple families to flee,” said Kennedy.

Organized crime takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras last year. Teenage girls are especially vulnerable, making up the largest share of victims of sexual violence.

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

Pursuing for Justice and Hope

Pomerleau said they are now awaiting an formal response from the US government to the judge as to why the emergency order barring her removal was not respected.

“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 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 disobeyed and demand a remedy,” he said.

“We’re not stopping until we get her back”.

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

“My desire is to be able to progress and perhaps continue my studies, whether in Honduras or by finishing my term at the college. And eventually, to be able to see my family and my family again,” she said.

Her university, the school she was attending in Wellesley, issued a public comment addressing her situation 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,” said she. “This event to me isn’t fair, because we came to learn and strive, to advance in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”