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Any Lucia López Belloza had been separated from her parents and two younger sisters since beginning her first semester at a business college near Boston in the late summer. A family friend gave her plane tickets so she could fly home to Austin and surprise them for the holiday gathering.

The 19-year-old university student was standing at the departure gate at Boston airport when she was informed there was an “error” with her boarding pass; when she went to customer service, she was restrained and taken into custody by what she believed to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

“My thought was: ‘I was travelling to see my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the shock will be that I won’t be there,’” López said.

She was allowed a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. The next day, a U.S. judge granted an emergency order prohibiting her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be reviewed.

But the following day, she was chained at her wrists, feet 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 memory.

The Dangerous Country She Was Sent Back To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is one of the main transit corridors for drugs transported from the southern continent to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades struggling against the growing influence of armed gangs that dominate whole districts, terrorize families and enlist young people. The country’s murder rate is three times the world average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a knife-edge national vote of which the ballot tally has dragged on for days, with officials and analysts criticising efforts by the US president, Donald Trump, to influence Hondurans’ votes.

“It never occurred to me I would go through this tragedy,” stated López, who, since being deported on November 22nd, has been staying at her grandparents’ home in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s economic hub.

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Her Lawyer

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

“This situation is an unconstitutional nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Massachusetts legal representative, who has represented other high-profile ICE detainees.

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

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

Government Response and Legal Contradictions

Federal officials repeatedly said the chief focus of enforcement actions was individuals with serious records, but – like many others detained by immigration officers – the student had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is a civil matter but a administrative violation.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) representative said the individual, “an illegal alien”, was arrested because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an court ordered her removed 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 shown the deportation order, and that even if it exists, a federal law stipulates that apprehensions in such instances can only take place within a three-month period after the order is issued – “not a decade after the fact,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mum brought her here because of how terrible the circumstances were in Honduras, where criminal groups were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the Pilgrims 400 years ago, for a better life and to escape persecution,” said the lawyer.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “faces a large emigration problem”, said a social science researcher, a academic who researches returned migrants in the region. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, most traveling to the US.

In that year, when the student's family left Honduras, their home town, San Pedro Sula, was considered the most violent city of the globe and their community, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“Young people and households that I’ve interviewed from there reported a very strong presence of gangs who forced multiple families to flee,” said 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 largest share of victims of sexual violence.

“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 Future

The student's lawyer said they are now waiting for an official explanation from the US government to the judge as to why the emergency order barring 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 easy and reasonable thing to do.

“But they might have a alternative stance, and that would necessitate me to make a forceful argument that the court order was disobeyed and seek a solution,” he said.

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

López said she was attempting to stay focused: “I am trying to be as optimistic and as strong as I can.

“My desire is to be able to move forward and perhaps continue my studies, whether here or by completing my term at the college. And one day, to be able to see my family and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

Babson College, the institution she was enrolled at in Massachusetts, issued a public comment addressing her situation and saying that “the priority remains on supporting the student and their relatives”.

“My main goal 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 advance in search of that American dream so many of us had.”