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Any Lucia López Belloza had not seen her parents and two little sisters since beginning her freshman year at Babson College near Boston in August. A generous individual gave her plane tickets so she could fly home to Austin and give them a surprise for Thanksgiving.

The 19-year-old business student was already at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was told there was an “issue” with her travel documents; when she went to customer service, she was restrained and arrested by what she believed to be two federal immigration agents.

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

She was allowed a single call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. The next day, a U.S. judge issued an emergency order barring her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her court proceedings could be examined.

But the next morning, she was chained at her wrists, ankles and torso and expelled to her birth Honduras, a country which she departed at the tender age of seven and of which she has virtually no memory.

A Dangerous Land She Was Deported To

A nation home to about eleven million people, Honduras is a key trafficking routes for drugs moved from the southern continent to its northern neighbor, and has spent many years struggling against the expanding influence of violent cartels that dominate whole districts, extort families and recruit youths. The country’s murder rate is triple the global average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a knife-edge national vote of which the vote count has been delayed for several days, with officials and analysts criticising repeated attempts by the US president, Donald Trump, to influence Hondurans’ votes.

“It never occurred to me I would go through such an ordeal,” stated López, who, since being sent away on 22 November, has been staying at her relatives' house in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s economic hub.

A ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Legal Counsel

Her lightning-fast expulsion – under 48 hours after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn international scrutiny as one of the clearest cases of reported violations under Trump’s large-scale removal policy.

“This situation is an legally dubious nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based legal representative, who has defended other high-profile ICE detention cases.

“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” said the attorney. “She was shackled like she was a dangerous felon, and then deported to Honduras with no opportunity to have a legal hearing or even talk to an attorney,” he continued.

“If that isn’t unconstitutional, it is hard to imagine what would be,” Pomerleau said.

Government Statement and Legal Disputes

Trump administration officials have stated the chief focus of arrests and deportations was dangerous criminals, but – like most immigrants apprehended by immigration officers – López had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is a civil matter but a administrative violation.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said López, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an court 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 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 90-day window after the order is issued – “not a decade after the fact,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mum came to the US because of how terrible the circumstances were in Honduras, where gang members were murdering and threatening people … They came here just like the Pilgrims centuries ago, for a brighter future and to find safety,” explained the lawyer.

Life in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a significant out-migration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a academic who studies returned migrants in the region. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, most 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 globe 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 presence of criminal organizations who forced many residents to leave,” noted Kennedy.

Organized crime takes a particularly heavy toll on females, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras last year. Teenage girls are especially vulnerable, making up the largest share of female victims of assault.

“Now you have a young woman back in a place where it’s very dangerous to be a young woman, who was given no legal recourse in the US,” she added.

Fighting for Return and Hope

The student's lawyer said they are now waiting for an formal response from the US government to the judge as to why the emergency order stopping her removal was not respected.

“There is a chance the government will say: ‘Sorry, we made a mistake 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 strong legal case that the court order was disobeyed and seek a solution,” he explained.

“We’re not stopping until we she is returned”.

López said she was attempting to keep her mind occupied: “I try to be as positive and as resilient as I can.

“My desire is to be able to move forward and perhaps continue my studies, whether here or by finishing my term at the university. And one day, to be able to reunite with my family and my family again,” she expressed.

Babson College, the school she was attending in Massachusetts, issued a statement addressing her situation and saying that “the priority remains on supporting the individual and their relatives”.

“My primary objective in the US was always to pursue an education,” stated López. “What happened to me isn’t fair, because we went there to study and work hard, to advance in pursuit of that promise of opportunity so many of us had.”