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Any Lucia López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since beginning her freshman year at Babson College near Boston in the late summer. An acquaintance gave her airfare so she could travel back to her family in Texas and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The teenage business student was standing at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was told there was an “error” with her travel documents; when she reached the service desk, she was restrained and arrested by what she understood to be two federal immigration agents.

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

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 prohibiting her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her court proceedings could be reviewed.

However the following day, she was chained at her wrists, ankles and waist and deported to her native Central American nation, a country which she departed at the age of seven and of which she has almost no memory.

The Volatile Land She Was Deported To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is one of the main transit corridors for narcotics moved from South America to Mexico, and has spent many years grappling with the growing power of armed gangs that control entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and enlist 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 national vote of which the vote count has dragged on for several days, with officials and analysts condemning repeated attempts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway Hondurans’ votes.

“It never occurred to me I would experience this tragedy,” said the young woman, who, since being sent away on 22 November, has been staying at her relatives' house in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s economic hub.

A ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ Says Her Lawyer

Her rapid deportation – under two days after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the clearest examples of reported violations under Trump’s mass deportation policy.

“Her case is an legally dubious horror show,” said her attorney, the Massachusetts Todd Pomerleau, who has defended other high-profile ICE detention cases.

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

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

Official Response and Juridical Contradictions

Trump administration officials repeatedly said the chief focus of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like many others apprehended by immigration officers – López had no criminal record. Being undocumented in the US is a civil matter but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said the individual, “an undocumented individual”, was taken into custody because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an immigration judge ordered her removed from the country in 2015, over 10 years ago. She has remained unlawfully 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 U.S. statute specifies that arrests in such cases can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is finalized – “not 10 years later,” argued Pomerleau.

“Her mum brought her here because of how terrible the circumstances were in Honduras, where criminal groups were killing and extorting people … They arrived just like the early settlers 400 years ago, for a brighter future and to find safety,” said the lawyer.

Life in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a large out-migration problem”, said a social science researcher, a Soros justice fellow who studies returned migrants in Central America. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, the majority heading to the US.

In that year, when the student's family fled Honduras, their city, San Pedro Sula, was considered the murder capital of the globe and their neighbourhood, a specific district, 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 flee,” noted the researcher.

Organized crime has a devastating impact on females, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras last year. Teenage girls are particularly affected, making up the majority of female victims of assault.

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

Fighting for Return and Future

Pomerleau said they are now waiting for an formal response from the American authorities to the judge as to why the judge's order stopping her deportation was ignored.

“It’s possible the administration will say: ‘We apologize, we made a mistake here, and we’re going to {bring her back|facilitate her return.’ That would be the easy and reasonable thing to do.

“But they might have a different approach, and that’s going to require me to make a forceful argument that the court order was disobeyed and demand a remedy,” he said.

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

López said she was attempting to keep her mind occupied: “I am trying to be as positive and as resilient as I can.

“My desire is to be able to move forward and maybe resume my education, whether in Honduras or by completing my term at the college. And one day, to be able to reunite with my family and my loved ones again,” she said.

Her university, the school she was enrolled at in Massachusetts, issued a statement regarding her situation and saying that “our focus remains on supporting the individual and their relatives”.

“My primary objective in the US was always to pursue an education,” said López. “This event 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 dream of.”