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The Lucía López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since starting her freshman year at Babson College near Boston in the late summer. A generous individual gave her airfare so she could fly home to her family in Texas and give them a surprise for the holiday gathering.

The teenage business student was standing at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was told there was an “issue” with her travel documents; when she went to the service desk, she was handcuffed and arrested by what she understood to be two federal immigration 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 said.

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who contacted a legal representative. A day later, a U.S. judge issued 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 shackled at her hands, ankles and torso and deported to her birth Honduras, a country which she left at the age of seven and of which she has almost no recollection.

A Dangerous Country López Was Deported Back To

A nation home to about eleven million people, Honduras is a primary trafficking routes for drugs moved from the southern continent to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades grappling with the expanding power of violent cartels that dominate whole districts, extort families and enlist youths. The nation's murder rate is triple the global average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a extremely close presidential election of which the vote count has been delayed for several days, with officials and analysts criticising repeated attempts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to influence the electoral process.

“It never occurred to me I would go through such an ordeal,” stated López, who, since being deported on 22 November, has been staying at her grandparents’ home in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

A ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Legal Counsel

Her lightning-fast deportation – less than 48 hours after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the starkest examples of reported violations under Trump’s large-scale removal initiative.

“This situation is an legally dubious horror show,” said her attorney, the Massachusetts Todd Pomerleau, who has represented other high-profile ICE detainees.

“She received no explanation why she was detained,” said Pomerleau. “She was shackled like she was a hardened criminal, and then sent to Honduras with no opportunity to have a legal hearing or even talk to an lawyer,” he continued.

“Should this not be considered a breach of rights, it is hard to imagine what would be,” he concluded.

Official Response and Juridical Contradictions

Trump administration officials have stated the chief focus of arrests and deportations was dangerous criminals, but – like many others detained by ICE agents – the student had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is not a crime but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said López, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody because she “entered the country in 2014 and an court 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 presented with the removal 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 10 years later,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mother brought her here because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the early settlers centuries ago, for a better life and to find safety,” explained the lawyer.

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 home town, San Pedro Sula, was considered the most violent city of the world and their neighbourhood, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“The children and families that I have spoken with from there described a overwhelming presence of gangs who compelled many residents to leave,” noted the researcher.

Gang violence takes a particularly heavy toll on females, having been the main driver of femicides in Honduras last year. Teenage girls are especially vulnerable, making up the largest share of female victims of assault.

“And now you have a teenager back in a country where the risks are high to be a young woman, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she stated.

Pursuing for Return 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 deportation was ignored.

“There is a chance the administration will say: ‘We apologize, we made a mistake 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 forceful argument that the court order was violated and demand a remedy,” he explained.

“We will not cease until we get her back”.

The student said she was trying to stay focused: “I try to be as optimistic and as resilient as I can.

“I want to be able to progress and perhaps resume my education, whether in Honduras or by finishing my semester at the university. And one day, to be able to see my family and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

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

“My main goal in the US was always to pursue an education,” said López. “What happened 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 had.”