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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. An acquaintance gave her plane tickets so she could travel back to Austin and give them a surprise for Thanksgiving.

The 19-year-old university student was already at the boarding gate at Boston airport when she was informed there was an “issue” with her travel documents; when she went to the service desk, she was restrained and arrested by what she understood to be two federal immigration agents.

“My thought was: ‘I was travelling to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the surprise will be that I am not coming,’” López explained.

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. The next day, a U.S. judge granted an injunction barring her deportation from the US for at least three days until her court proceedings could be examined.

But the following day, she was shackled at her wrists, feet and torso and forcibly removed to her birth Central American nation, a country which she left at the age of seven and of which she has scarcely any memory.

The Dangerous Land López Was Deported To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a key transit corridors for narcotics moved from South America to Mexico, and has spent decades grappling with the growing power of violent cartels that dominate entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and recruit young people. The nation's homicide rate is three times the global average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a extremely close presidential election of which the ballot tally has been delayed for days, with local politicians and experts condemning repeated attempts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

“I never thought I would experience such an ordeal,” stated López, who, since being sent away on 22 November, has been residing at her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s economic hub.

An ‘Blatant Violation’ According to Legal Counsel

Her rapid deportation – less than 48 hours after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the clearest cases of reported violations under Trump’s mass deportation policy.

“This situation is an legally dubious horror show,” said her attorney, the Boston-based legal representative, who has represented other notable ICE detention cases.

“She received no explanation why she was detained,” said Pomerleau. “They restrained her like she was some type of hardened criminal, and then sent to Honduras with no chance 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 Response and Juridical Disputes

Federal officials have stated the primary target of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like many others apprehended by immigration officers – the student had a clean record. Being undocumented in the US is not a crime but a administrative violation.

A federal agency representative said López, “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 neither she nor he was ever presented with the deportation order, and that even if it exists, a federal law stipulates that arrests in such cases can only take place within a three-month period after the order is issued – “not a decade after the fact,” said the lawyer.

“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 centuries ago, for a better life and to find safety,” said the lawyer.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “has a large emigration issue”, 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 traveling to the US.

In that year, when López’s family left 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 very strong presence of gangs who compelled multiple families to flee,” noted Kennedy.

Gang violence takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras last year. Young women are particularly affected, making up the largest share of female victims of assault.

“And now you have a teenager back in a place where it’s very dangerous to be a young woman, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she added.

Fighting for Justice and Hope

The student's lawyer said they are now waiting for an official explanation from the American authorities to the judge as to why the emergency order barring her deportation was not respected.

“There is a chance the government will say: ‘We apologize, we erred here, and we’re going to {bring her back|facilitate her return.’ That would be the easy and reasonable thing to do.

“Yet they might have a alternative stance, and that would necessitate me to make a forceful argument that the court order was disobeyed and demand a remedy,” he explained.

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

López said she was trying 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 resume my education, whether in Honduras or by finishing my semester at the university. And one day, to be able to reunite with my parents and my family again,” she expressed.

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

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said López. “What happened to me is unjust, because we came to study and work hard, to move forward in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”