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Any Lucia López Belloza had been away from her parents and two little sisters since beginning her first semester at a business college near the city of Boston in August. A generous individual provided her with airfare so she could fly home to Austin and give them a surprise for the holiday gathering.

The teenage business student was already at the departure 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 restrained and arrested by what she believed to be two federal immigration agents.

“I thought: ‘I am going to see my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the shock will be that I am not coming,’” the student said.

She was allowed a single call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. A day later, a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting her deportation 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 torso and forcibly removed to her birth Honduras, a nation which she departed at the tender age of seven and of which she has scarcely any recollection.

A Dangerous Country She Was Deported To

Home to about eleven million people, Honduras is one of the main trafficking routes for narcotics transported from the southern continent to Mexico, and has spent decades grappling with the growing influence of violent cartels that control entire neighbourhoods, extort families and enlist youths. The nation's murder rate is three times the global average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a knife-edge presidential election of which the ballot tally has dragged on for days, with officials and analysts criticising repeated attempts 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 deported on 22 November, has been staying at her grandparents’ home in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

A ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ Says Her Lawyer

Her rapid deportation – less than 48 hours after she was detained at the airport – has attracted global attention as one of the clearest examples of reported abuses under Trump’s mass deportation initiative.

“This situation is an legally dubious nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based legal representative, who has represented other notable ICE detention cases.

“She received no explanation why she was arrested,” said the attorney. “She was shackled like she was some type of dangerous felon, 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,” he concluded.

Official Response and Juridical Contradictions

Federal officials have stated the primary target of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like most immigrants detained by immigration officers – the student had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is not a crime but a administrative violation.

A federal agency representative said the individual, “an illegal alien”, 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 illegally stayed in the country since.”

Her attorney said that no one was ever shown the removal order, and that even if it does exist, a U.S. statute specifies that arrests in such instances can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is issued – “not 10 years later,” argued Pomerleau.

“Her mother brought her here because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were murdering and threatening people … They came here just like the Pilgrims centuries ago, for a better life and to find safety,” said the lawyer.

Conditions in the Honduran City

Honduras “has a significant out-migration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a academic who researches returned migrants in Central America. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, the majority traveling to the US.

In that year, when López’s family fled Honduras, their home town, San Pedro Sula, was considered the murder capital of the world and their neighbourhood, a specific district, was one of the most dangerous.

“The children and families that I have spoken with from there reported a overwhelming control of criminal organizations who forced many residents to flee,” said the researcher.

Gang violence has a devastating impact on females, having been the primary cause of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Teenage girls are particularly affected, making up the largest share 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 legal recourse in the US,” she added.

Fighting for Return and Hope

Pomerleau said they are now awaiting an formal response from the US government to the judge as to why the emergency order barring her deportation 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 easy and reasonable thing to do.

“But they might have a different approach, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the court order was disobeyed and demand a remedy,” he explained.

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

The student said she was attempting to keep her mind occupied: “I try to be as optimistic and as strong as I can.

“I want to be able to move forward and maybe resume my education, whether here or by finishing my semester at the university. And one day, to be able to reunite with my parents and my family again,” she said.

Her university, the school she was attending in Wellesley, issued a statement addressing her situation and saying that “our focus remains on supporting the student and their family”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said she. “What happened to me is unjust, because we came to study and work hard, to advance in pursuit of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”