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The Lucía López Belloza had not seen her parents and two younger sisters since beginning her first semester at a business college near the city of Boston in August. A family friend provided her with plane tickets so she could travel back to her family in Texas and surprise them for the holiday gathering.

The 19-year-old university student was already at the boarding gate at Boston airport when she was told there was an “problem” with her boarding pass; when she reached customer service, she was restrained and taken into custody by what she understood to be two federal immigration agents.

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

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. The next day, a federal judge issued an injunction barring her deportation from the US for at least three days until her case could be reviewed.

However the next morning, she was shackled 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 scarcely any recollection.

A Dangerous Land She Was Deported To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is one of the main transit corridors for narcotics transported from South America to Mexico, and has spent many years grappling with the growing influence of armed gangs that dominate whole districts, extort families and enlist young people. The nation's homicide rate is three times the global average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a extremely close national vote of which the vote count has dragged on for days, with local politicians and analysts condemning repeated attempts by the US president, Donald Trump, to influence the electoral process.

“I never thought I would experience such an ordeal,” said the young woman, who, since being sent away on 22 November, has been residing at her relatives' house in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second-largest city.

An ‘Blatant Violation’ According to Legal Counsel

Her lightning-fast expulsion – under two days after she was detained at the airport – has drawn international scrutiny as one of the starkest examples of reported abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal policy.

“Her case is an legally dubious nightmare,” said her attorney, the Boston-based Todd Pomerleau, who has represented other notable ICE detention cases.

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

“Should this not be considered unconstitutional, I don’t know what is,” Pomerleau concluded.

Government Statement and Legal Disputes

Trump administration officials repeatedly said the primary target of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like most immigrants apprehended by immigration officers – the student had no criminal record. Being undocumented in the US is a civil matter but a civil infraction.

A federal agency representative said López, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an immigration judge 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 no one was ever presented with the removal order, and that even if it exists, a U.S. statute specifies that apprehensions in such cases can only take place within a three-month period after the order is issued – “not 10 years later,” said Pomerleau.

“Her mother came to the US because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the Pilgrims centuries ago, for a better life and to escape persecution,” explained the attorney.

Conditions in the Honduran City

Honduras “has a large out-migration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a academic who studies deportees in the region. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, the majority heading to the US.

In that year, when López’s family left Honduras, their city, this urban center, was considered the most violent city of the globe and their community, a specific district, 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 forced many residents to leave,” noted the researcher.

Organized crime takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Young women are particularly affected, making up the majority of victims of assault.

“And now you have a teenager back in a country where it’s very dangerous to be a female, who was given no legal recourse in the US,” she added.

Fighting for Return and Hope

Pomerleau said they are now awaiting an official explanation 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: ‘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.

“But they might have a alternative stance, and that would necessitate me to make a forceful argument that the judicial ruling was violated and seek a solution,” he explained.

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

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

“My desire is to be able to move forward and maybe continue my studies, whether here or by completing my term at the university. And eventually, to be able to reunite with my parents and my loved ones again,” she said.

Her university, the institution she was attending in Massachusetts, issued a public comment regarding her case and saying that “our focus remains on supporting the individual and their family”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” stated López. “What happened to me isn’t fair, because we went there to study and work hard, to move forward in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”