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Any Lucia López Belloza had not seen her mother and father and two little sisters since starting her freshman year at Babson College near Boston in the late summer. An acquaintance provided her with plane tickets so she could travel back to Austin and give them a surprise for the holiday gathering.

The 19-year-old university student was already at the boarding gate at Boston airport when she was told there was an “problem” with her boarding pass; when she went to the service desk, she was handcuffed and taken into custody 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 stated.

She was allowed a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a legal representative. A day later, a U.S. judge granted an injunction barring her removal from the US for at least three days until her case could be examined.

But the following day, she was chained at her hands, feet and torso and deported to her birth Honduras, a country which she departed at the age of seven and of which she has almost no recollection.

A Volatile Country López Was Deported To

A nation home to about eleven million people, Honduras is a primary trafficking routes for drugs transported from the southern continent to Mexico, and has spent decades struggling against the expanding power of violent cartels that dominate whole districts, terrorize families and recruit young people. The nation's murder rate is three times the global average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a knife-edge presidential election of which the ballot tally has been delayed for several days, with officials and analysts criticising efforts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

“It never occurred to me I would experience this tragedy,” stated López, who, since being deported on 22 November, has been staying at her grandparents’ home in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ Says Legal Counsel

Her rapid deportation – less than two days after she was arrested at the airport – has attracted global attention as one of the starkest cases of reported abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal policy.

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

“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” said the attorney. “They restrained her like she was some type of dangerous felon, and then sent to Honduras with no opportunity to have a court hearing or even talk to an attorney,” he continued.

“Should this not be considered unconstitutional, I don’t know what is,” he concluded.

Official Response and Juridical Disputes

Trump administration officials have stated the primary target of arrests and deportations was individuals with serious records, but – like most immigrants detained by ICE agents – the student had a clean record. Being undocumented in the US is a civil matter but a administrative violation.

A federal agency spokesperson said the individual, “an undocumented individual”, was taken into custody because she “entered the country in 2014 and an court issued a removal order from the country in 2015, over 10 years ago. She has remained unlawfully in the country since.”

Her attorney said that neither she nor he was ever shown the deportation order, and that even if it does exist, a U.S. statute specifies that apprehensions in such cases can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is issued – “not 10 years later,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mum came to the US because of how horrific the circumstances 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 find safety,” explained the lawyer.

Conditions in the Honduran City

Honduras “has a significant out-migration issue”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a academic who researches returned migrants in the region. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, the majority traveling to the US.

In 2014, when the student's family fled Honduras, their home town, San Pedro Sula, was considered the most violent city of the world and their community, La Pradera, was one of the most violent.

“Young people and households that I have spoken with from there reported a very strong presence of gangs who forced many residents to leave,” said Kennedy.

Organized crime has a devastating impact on women, having been the primary cause of femicides in Honduras recently. Young women are especially vulnerable, making up the largest share of female victims of sexual violence.

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

Pursuing for Return and Hope

Pomerleau said they are now awaiting an official explanation from the American authorities to the judge as to why the emergency order barring her removal was not respected.

“It’s possible the government will say: ‘We apologize, 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 alternative stance, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the judicial ruling was disobeyed and demand a remedy,” he explained.

“We’re not stopping until we she is returned”.

López said she was attempting to stay focused: “I am trying to be as positive and as strong as I can.

“My desire is to be able to progress and maybe continue my studies, whether here or by completing my term at the college. And one day, to be able to see my family and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

Babson College, the school she was enrolled at in Wellesley, issued a statement regarding her situation and saying that “the priority remains on assisting the individual and their family”.

“My primary objective in the US was always to pursue an education,” stated she. “This event to me is unjust, because we went there to learn and strive, to advance in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”