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The Lucia López Belloza had been away from her parents and two little sisters since beginning her freshman year at Babson College near the city of Boston in the late summer. An acquaintance provided her with plane tickets so she could travel back to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The 19-year-old business student was already at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was informed there was an “issue” with her boarding pass; when she went to customer service, she was handcuffed and taken into custody by what she believed 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 explained.

She was allowed a phone call to her parents, who contacted a lawyer. A day later, a U.S. judge granted an emergency order barring her deportation from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be reviewed.

But the next morning, she was shackled at her hands, feet and torso and forcibly removed to her birth Central American nation, a country which she departed at the age of seven and of which she has almost no memory.

The Volatile Land She Was Sent To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a primary trafficking routes for narcotics transported from the southern continent to its northern neighbor, and has spent many years struggling against the growing power of violent cartels that dominate whole districts, terrorize families and recruit young people. The nation's homicide rate is three times the world average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a extremely close national vote of which the ballot tally has dragged on for several days, with local politicians and analysts criticising efforts by the US president, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

“I never thought I would go through this tragedy,” said López, who, since being sent away on November 22nd, has been residing at her grandparents’ home in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s economic hub.

A ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ Says Legal Counsel

Her lightning-fast deportation – less than two days after she was detained at the airport – has attracted international scrutiny as one of the starkest examples of reported violations under Trump’s mass deportation initiative.

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

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

“If that isn’t a breach of rights, I don’t know what is,” Pomerleau said.

Official Statement and Legal Disputes

Federal officials repeatedly said the primary target of enforcement actions 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 federal agency representative said López, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an court ordered her removed from the country in 2015, a decade ago. She has remained unlawfully in the country since.”

Her attorney said that neither she nor he was ever presented with the removal 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 10 years later,” said the lawyer.

“Her mum brought her here because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where criminal groups were murdering and threatening people … They came here just like the early settlers centuries ago, for a brighter future and to find safety,” said the attorney.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “has a significant emigration issue”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a Soros justice fellow who studies returned migrants in Central America. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, the majority traveling to the US.

In 2014, when López’s family left Honduras, their city, this urban center, was considered the murder capital of the world and their community, 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 criminal organizations who compelled multiple families to flee,” noted Kennedy.

Organized crime has a devastating impact on females, having been the primary cause of femicides in Honduras last year. Teenage girls are particularly affected, making up the largest share of victims of sexual violence.

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

Fighting for Return and Hope

The student's lawyer said they are now awaiting an formal response from the American authorities to the court as to why the emergency order barring her deportation was not respected.

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

“Yet they might have a different approach, and that’s going to require 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”.

The student said she was trying to keep her mind occupied: “I try to be as optimistic and as resilient as I can.

“My desire is to be able to move forward and maybe resume my education, whether here or by finishing my term at the university. And eventually, to be able to see my parents and my loved ones again,” she said.

Her university, the school she was enrolled at in Massachusetts, issued a public comment regarding her situation and saying that “our focus remains on assisting the individual and their relatives”.

“My main goal in the US was always to pursue an education,” stated she. “This event to me is unjust, because we came to learn and strive, to move forward in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”