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Any Lucia López Belloza had not seen her mother and father and two younger sisters since beginning her first semester at a business college near the city of Boston in August. A family friend gave her airfare so she could travel back to her family in Texas and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The 19-year-old business student was standing at the boarding gate at Logan Airport when she was told there was an “error” with her boarding pass; when she went to the service desk, she was restrained and arrested by what she believed to be two federal immigration agents.

“My thought was: ‘I was travelling to see my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the shock will be that I won’t be there,’” the student explained.

She was permitted a single call to her parents, who contacted a legal representative. The next day, a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting her deportation from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be examined.

But the following day, she was chained at her wrists, feet and waist and forcibly removed to her birth Honduras, a nation which she left at the age of seven and of which she has almost no memory.

A Dangerous Land She Was Sent Back To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a key transit corridors for narcotics transported from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades grappling with the growing power of armed gangs that dominate entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and enlist young people. The country’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 dragged on for several days, with officials and experts criticising repeated attempts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to influence Hondurans’ votes.

“It never occurred to me I would go through such an ordeal,” said López, who, since being deported on 22 November, has been staying at her relatives' house in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Her Lawyer

Her swift expulsion – less than 48 hours after she was detained at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the starkest examples of alleged abuses under Trump’s mass deportation policy.

“This situation is an legally dubious horror show,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based Todd Pomerleau, who has represented other high-profile ICE detainees.

“She received no explanation why she was arrested,” said Pomerleau. “She was shackled 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 lawyer,” he added.

“Should this not be considered unconstitutional, it is hard to imagine what would be,” Pomerleau concluded.

Official Statement and Juridical Contradictions

Federal officials have stated the chief focus of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like most immigrants detained by ICE agents – López had a clean record. Being undocumented in the US is not a crime but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) representative said the individual, “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, over 10 years ago. She has illegally stayed 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 specifies 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,” argued Pomerleau.

“Her mum came to the US because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where criminal groups were murdering and threatening people … They came here just like the Pilgrims 400 years ago, for a better life and to escape persecution,” said the attorney.

Life in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a large emigration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a Soros justice fellow who studies deportees in Central America. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, the majority traveling to the US.

In 2014, when López’s family left 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 dangerous.

“The children and families that I’ve interviewed from there reported a very strong control of criminal organizations who forced many residents to flee,” noted the researcher.

Gang violence takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the primary cause of femicides in Honduras last year. Young women are particularly affected, making up the majority of victims of assault.

“And now you have a young woman back in a place where the risks are high to be a young woman, who was given no legal recourse in the US,” she added.

Pursuing for Return and Hope

The student's lawyer said they are now waiting for an official explanation from the US government to the court as to why the emergency order stopping her deportation was not respected.

“There is a chance the administration will say: ‘Sorry, 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.

“Yet 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 explained.

“We will not cease until we she is returned”.

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

“My desire is to be able to progress and maybe continue my studies, whether in Honduras or by completing my term at the college. And eventually, to be able to see my parents and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

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

“My primary objective in the US was always to study,” stated she. “This event to me is unjust, because we came to study and strive, to move forward in pursuit of that promise of opportunity so many of us had.”