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Any Lucia López Belloza had been separated from her parents and two little sisters since starting her freshman year at a business college near the city of Boston in August. A family friend provided her with airfare so she could travel back to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The teenage university student was standing at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was informed there was an “problem” with her boarding pass; when she reached customer service, she was restrained and taken into custody by what she believed to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 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 allowed a single call to her parents, who contacted a legal representative. The next day, a federal judge issued an injunction barring her deportation from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be reviewed.

However the next morning, she was chained at her hands, feet and torso and deported to her birth Central American nation, a country which she departed at the tender age of seven and of which she has virtually no memory.

The Dangerous Country She Was Sent Back To

Home to about eleven million people, Honduras is one of the main transit corridors for drugs transported from the southern continent to its northern neighbor, and has spent many years struggling against the expanding power of violent cartels that control entire neighbourhoods, extort families and enlist 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 national vote of which the vote count has dragged on for days, with local politicians and analysts condemning efforts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway Hondurans’ votes.

“I never thought I would experience such an ordeal,” said the young woman, who, since being sent away on November 22nd, has been residing at her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second-largest city.

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Legal Counsel

Her swift deportation – under two days after she was detained at the airport – has attracted international scrutiny as one of the starkest examples of alleged abuses under Trump’s mass deportation initiative.

“Her case is an unconstitutional nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based legal representative, who has defended other high-profile ICE detainees.

“She received no explanation why she was arrested,” added Pomerleau. “She was shackled like she was a hardened criminal, and then deported to Honduras with no opportunity to have a court hearing or even talk to an lawyer,” he added.

“If that isn’t unconstitutional, I don’t know what is,” Pomerleau said.

Government Response and Legal Disputes

Federal officials have stated the chief focus of arrests and deportations was individuals with serious records, but – like many others detained by ICE agents – López had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is a civil matter but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said López, “an illegal alien”, was arrested because she “entered the country in 2014 and an court ordered her removed from the country in 2015, a decade 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 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 10 years later,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mother brought her here because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were murdering and threatening people … They arrived just like the early settlers 400 years ago, for a better life and to escape persecution,” said the attorney.

Conditions in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “has a large out-migration problem”, said a social science researcher, a Soros justice fellow who researches deportees in the region. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, most traveling to the US.

In 2014, when López’s family fled Honduras, their city, this urban center, was considered the murder capital of the globe and their neighbourhood, a specific district, was one of the most dangerous.

“The children and families that I’ve interviewed from there described a overwhelming control of gangs who forced multiple families to flee,” noted Kennedy.

Organized crime takes a particularly heavy toll on females, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Young women are particularly affected, making up the majority of victims of sexual violence.

“And now you have a teenager back in a country where it’s very dangerous to be a female, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she stated.

Pursuing for Return and Hope

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

“It’s possible 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.

“But they might have a different approach, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the judicial ruling was violated and seek a solution,” he explained.

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

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

“My desire is to be able to progress and perhaps resume my education, whether here or by completing my semester at the university. And eventually, to be able to see my family and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

Babson College, the school she was enrolled at in Massachusetts, issued a public comment addressing her case and saying that “our focus remains on assisting the student and their relatives”.

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