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The Lucía López Belloza had not seen her mother and father and two little sisters since starting her freshman year at a business college near Boston in August. An acquaintance gave her airfare so she could fly home to her family in Texas and surprise them for the holiday gathering.

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

“I thought: ‘I am going to see my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the shock will be that I am not coming,’” López explained.

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

However the following day, she was shackled at her wrists, feet and waist and deported to her native Honduras, a country which she left at the age of seven and of which she has scarcely any memory.

The Dangerous Land She Was Sent To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is one of the main trafficking routes for drugs moved from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades grappling with the expanding influence of violent cartels that dominate entire neighbourhoods, extort families and recruit youths. The country’s murder rate is triple the world average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a extremely close presidential election of which the ballot tally has been delayed for several days, with local politicians and experts condemning efforts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

“It never occurred to me I would go through such an ordeal,” stated the young woman, who, since being deported on November 22nd, has been staying at her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s economic hub.

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Her Lawyer

Her lightning-fast deportation – under 48 hours after she was arrested at the airport – has attracted international scrutiny as one of the starkest examples of alleged abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal policy.

“Her case is an unconstitutional nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Massachusetts legal representative, who has represented other high-profile ICE detention cases.

“She wasn’t told why she was arrested,” added Pomerleau. “They restrained her like she was a hardened criminal, and then deported to Honduras with no chance to have a court hearing or even talk to an lawyer,” he continued.

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

Government Statement and Juridical Contradictions

Federal officials repeatedly said the primary target of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like many others detained by ICE agents – the student had a clean record. Lacking legal status in the US is not a crime but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) representative 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, over 10 years ago. She has illegally stayed in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that neither she nor he was ever shown the deportation order, and that even if it does exist, a federal law stipulates 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 mother brought her here because of how horrific the circumstances were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the early settlers 400 years ago, for a better life and to find safety,” explained the attorney.

Conditions in the Honduran City

Honduras “has a large emigration issue”, said a social science researcher, a Soros justice fellow who studies returned migrants in the region. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, most traveling to the US.

In 2014, when the student's family fled Honduras, their city, this urban center, was considered the most violent city of the globe and their neighbourhood, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“Young people and households that I’ve interviewed from there reported a very strong control of criminal organizations who compelled many residents to flee,” noted Kennedy.

Organized crime has a devastating impact on females, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Young women are particularly affected, making up the largest share of female victims of assault.

“Now you have a young woman back in a country where the risks are high to be a young woman, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she added.

Fighting for Return and Future

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 barring her deportation was ignored.

“It’s possible 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 sensible and just thing to do.

“But they might have a different approach, and that would necessitate me to make a forceful argument that the judicial ruling was violated and demand a remedy,” he said.

“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 resilient as I can.

“I want to be able to move forward and perhaps resume my education, whether in Honduras or by finishing my term at the college. And one day, to be able to reunite with my family and my family again,” she expressed.

Her university, the institution she was enrolled at in Wellesley, issued a statement regarding her case and saying that “our focus remains on assisting the individual and their family”.

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