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The Lucia López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since starting her first semester at Babson College near Boston in August. An acquaintance provided her with plane tickets so she could fly home to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The 19-year-old university student was already at the departure gate at Boston airport when she was informed there was an “error” with her travel documents; when she went to customer service, she was restrained 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 surprise will be that I won’t be there,’” the student stated.

She was permitted a single call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. The next day, a U.S. judge issued an emergency order prohibiting her deportation from the US for at least three days until her case could be examined.

However the next morning, she was shackled at her hands, ankles and waist and expelled to her birth Honduras, a country which she left at the age of seven and of which she has virtually no memory.

A Dangerous Country She Was Sent To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is one of the main transit corridors for narcotics transported from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent many years grappling with the expanding influence of armed gangs that control entire neighbourhoods, extort families and recruit youths. The nation's homicide rate is triple the global average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a extremely close national vote of which the vote count has been delayed for days, with officials and analysts 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,” stated López, who, since being deported on November 22nd, has been residing at her relatives' house in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ Says Her Lawyer

Her lightning-fast expulsion – under two days after she was detained at the airport – has attracted global attention as one of the clearest cases of reported violations under Trump’s mass deportation initiative.

“This situation is an legally dubious horror show,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based legal representative, who has defended other high-profile ICE detention cases.

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

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

Government Statement and Legal Contradictions

Federal officials repeatedly said the primary target of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like most immigrants apprehended by immigration officers – the student had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is a civil matter but a administrative violation.

A federal agency spokesperson said the individual, “an illegal alien”, was arrested because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an court issued a removal order 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 presented with the removal order, and that even if it does exist, a federal law specifies that apprehensions 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 came to the US because of how horrific the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were murdering and threatening people … They came here just like the early settlers centuries ago, for a better life and to find safety,” explained the lawyer.

Life in the Honduran City

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

In that year, when López’s family left Honduras, their home town, this urban center, was considered the most violent city of the globe and their community, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“The children and families that I’ve interviewed from there described a overwhelming presence of criminal organizations who forced many residents to leave,” noted the researcher.

Gang violence takes a particularly heavy toll on females, having been the main driver of femicides in Honduras recently. Young women are particularly affected, making up the majority of female victims of assault.

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

Pursuing for Return and Future

Pomerleau said they are now waiting for an formal response from the US government to the court as to why the judge's order stopping her removal was not respected.

“There is a chance the government 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 alternative stance, and that’s going to require me to make a strong legal case that the judicial ruling was violated and seek a solution,” he explained.

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

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

“My desire is to be able to move forward and maybe continue my studies, whether in Honduras or by completing my semester at the college. And eventually, to be able to reunite with my family and my loved ones again,” she said.

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

“My primary objective in the US was always to study,” stated she. “What happened to me is unjust, because we came to learn and work hard, to advance in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”