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Any Lucia López Belloza had been separated from her parents and two younger sisters since starting her first semester at Babson College near Boston in August. A family friend provided her with airfare so she could travel back to her family in Texas and give them a surprise for Thanksgiving.

The 19-year-old business student was standing at the boarding gate at Boston airport when she was informed there was an “problem” with her travel documents; when she went to the service desk, she was handcuffed and taken into custody by what she understood to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

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

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who contacted a legal representative. The next day, a federal judge issued an emergency order prohibiting her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her court proceedings could be reviewed.

But the following day, she was chained at her hands, ankles and waist and deported to her native Honduras, a country which she left at the tender age of seven and of which she has virtually no recollection.

A Volatile Land López Was Deported To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a primary trafficking routes for drugs transported from the southern continent to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades struggling against the expanding influence of violent cartels that dominate whole districts, terrorize families and recruit young people. The nation's murder rate is triple the world average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a extremely close national vote of which the ballot tally has been delayed for days, with officials and analysts criticising efforts by the US president, Donald Trump, to influence the electoral process.

“I never thought 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 a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

A ‘Blatant Violation’ Says Legal Counsel

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

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

“She wasn’t told why she was arrested,” added Pomerleau. “They restrained her 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 added.

“Should this not be considered a breach of rights, it is hard to imagine what would be,” Pomerleau concluded.

Official Response and Juridical Contradictions

Trump administration officials repeatedly said the primary target of arrests and deportations was individuals with serious records, but – like most immigrants detained by immigration officers – the student had a clean record. Lacking legal status in the US is a civil matter but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said the individual, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody 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 no one was ever presented with the deportation order, and that even if it does exist, a U.S. statute specifies that apprehensions in such instances can only take place within a three-month period after the order is finalized – “not a decade after the fact,” said Pomerleau.

“Her mum brought her here because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the early settlers centuries ago, for a brighter future and to escape persecution,” explained the lawyer.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “has a large emigration issue”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a academic who studies deportees in Central America. 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 community, a specific district, was one of the most violent.

“The children and families that I have spoken with from there described a very strong control of criminal organizations who compelled multiple families to leave,” said the researcher.

Organized crime takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the main driver of femicides in Honduras recently. Young women are especially vulnerable, making up the majority of female victims of sexual violence.

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

Fighting for Return and Hope

Pomerleau said they are now waiting for an official explanation from the US government to the court as to why the judge's order stopping her removal 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.

“Yet they might have a alternative stance, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the judicial ruling was disobeyed and seek a solution,” he said.

“We will not cease until we get her back”.

López said she was attempting to stay focused: “I try to be as optimistic and as resilient as I can.

“My desire is to be able to move forward and perhaps resume my education, whether here or by completing my term at the college. And one day, to be able to see my parents and my loved ones again,” she said.

Her university, the institution she was attending in Massachusetts, issued a public comment addressing her situation and saying that “the priority remains on assisting the student and their relatives”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said López. “What happened to me isn’t fair, because we went there to study and strive, to advance in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”