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The Lucía López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since starting her first semester at a business college near Boston in the late summer. A family friend provided her with airfare so she could fly home to Austin and give them a surprise for the holiday gathering.

The 19-year-old university 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 taken into custody by what she understood to be two federal immigration agents.

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

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

However the following day, she was chained at her wrists, ankles and torso and deported to her birth Central American nation, a nation which she left at the age of seven and of which she has almost no memory.

The Dangerous Country López Was Sent Back To

A nation home to about eleven million people, Honduras is one of the main trafficking routes for drugs moved from the southern continent to Mexico, and has spent many years struggling against the growing influence of armed gangs that dominate entire neighbourhoods, extort families and recruit young people. The nation's murder rate is three times the world average.

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

“It never occurred to me I would experience this tragedy,” said the young woman, who, since being sent away on November 22nd, has been residing at her relatives' house in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s economic hub.

A ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Her Lawyer

Her lightning-fast expulsion – less than two days after she was detained at the airport – has drawn international scrutiny as one of the clearest examples of alleged violations under Trump’s mass deportation policy.

“Her case is an unconstitutional nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based Todd Pomerleau, who has defended other notable ICE detention cases.

“She received no explanation why she was arrested,” added Pomerleau. “She was shackled like she was a 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, it is hard to imagine what would be,” Pomerleau said.

Government Statement and Juridical Disputes

Federal officials have stated the primary target of arrests and deportations was dangerous criminals, but – like most immigrants detained by ICE agents – the student had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is a civil matter but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) representative said the individual, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody because she “entered the country in 2014 and an immigration judge issued a removal order from the country in 2015, a decade ago. She has remained unlawfully in the country since.”

Her attorney said that no one was ever shown the removal order, and that even if it exists, a U.S. statute stipulates that arrests in such instances can only take place within a three-month period after the order is finalized – “not a decade after the fact,” said Pomerleau.

“Her mum 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 brighter future and to find safety,” said the lawyer.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “faces a large out-migration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a Soros justice fellow 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 2014, when the student's family left Honduras, their home town, this urban center, was considered the murder capital of the globe and their neighbourhood, a specific district, was one of the most dangerous.

“Young people and households that I have spoken with from there reported a very strong presence of gangs who forced multiple families to leave,” noted Kennedy.

Gang violence takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the primary cause of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Young women are especially vulnerable, making up the majority of victims of sexual violence.

“Now you have a teenager back in a place where the risks are high to be a female, who was given no legal recourse in the US,” she stated.

Pursuing for Return and Future

The student's lawyer said they are now waiting for an formal response from the American authorities to the court as to why the judge's order stopping her removal was ignored.

“It’s possible the government 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 alternative stance, and that’s going to require me to make a forceful argument that the judicial ruling was violated and demand a remedy,” he said.

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

The student said she was attempting to keep her mind occupied: “I am trying to be as positive and as resilient 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 school she was attending in Wellesley, issued a statement addressing her situation and saying that “our focus remains on supporting the student and their family”.

“My primary objective in the US was always to pursue an education,” said López. “This event to me is unjust, because we came to learn and work hard, to move forward in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us had.”