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The Lucia López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since starting 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 surprise them for the holiday gathering.

The teenage business student was already at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was informed there was an “problem” with her boarding pass; when she went to customer service, she was handcuffed and taken into custody by what she believed to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

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

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

But the following day, she was chained at her hands, ankles and torso and expelled to her birth Central American nation, a nation which she departed at the age of seven and of which she has almost no memory.

The Dangerous Land López Was Sent Back To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a key transit corridors for drugs moved from South America to Mexico, and has spent many years grappling with the expanding power of armed gangs that control entire neighbourhoods, extort families and recruit young people. The nation's murder rate is triple the global average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a knife-edge national vote of which the vote count has been delayed for several days, with officials and experts criticising repeated attempts by the US president, Donald Trump, to influence the electoral process.

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

A ‘Blatant Violation’ According to Legal Counsel

Her swift deportation – less than 48 hours after she was detained at the airport – has drawn international scrutiny as one of the starkest examples of reported violations under Trump’s mass deportation policy.

“Her case is an unconstitutional nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based legal representative, who has defended other notable ICE detainees.

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

“If that isn’t a breach of rights, I don’t know what is,” Pomerleau concluded.

Government Statement and Juridical Disputes

Federal officials have stated the chief focus of arrests and deportations was dangerous criminals, but – like most immigrants detained by immigration officers – López had a clean record. Being undocumented in the US is not a crime but a administrative violation.

A federal agency spokesperson said the individual, “an illegal alien”, was arrested because she “entered the country in 2014 and an immigration judge 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 deportation order, and that even if it does exist, a federal law specifies that arrests 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 circumstances were in Honduras, where gang members were murdering and threatening people … They came here just like the early settlers centuries ago, for a brighter future and to find safety,” said the attorney.

Conditions in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “faces a significant out-migration issue”, said a social science researcher, a Soros justice fellow who researches returned migrants in the region. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, the majority 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 world and their community, 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 gangs who compelled multiple families to leave,” noted the researcher.

Gang violence has a devastating impact on females, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Young women are especially vulnerable, making up the majority of female victims of assault.

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

Fighting for Return and Future

Pomerleau said they are now awaiting an official explanation from the US government to the court as to why the emergency order stopping her removal was ignored.

“There is a chance 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 judicial ruling was disobeyed and seek a solution,” he explained.

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

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

“I want to be able to move forward and maybe resume my education, whether here or by finishing my semester at the college. And one day, to be able to reunite with my parents and my family again,” she said.

Babson College, the school she was attending in Wellesley, issued a statement regarding her case and saying that “our focus remains on assisting the individual and their relatives”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said López. “This event to me is unjust, because we came to study and strive, to advance in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”