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Any Lucía López Belloza had been separated from her parents and two younger sisters since starting her first semester at a business college near the city of Boston in the late summer. A family friend gave her plane tickets so she could fly home to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The teenage university student was standing at the boarding gate at Boston airport when she was told there was an “error” with her travel documents; when she reached customer service, 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 surprise will be that I won’t be there,’” López explained.

She was permitted a single call to her parents, who contacted a lawyer. The next day, a federal judge issued an emergency order barring her deportation from the US for at least three days until her case could be examined.

But the following day, she was shackled at her hands, feet and torso and expelled to her birth Honduras, a nation which she departed at the tender age of seven and of which she has almost no recollection.

A Volatile Land She Was Deported Back To

Home to about eleven million people, Honduras is a primary transit corridors for narcotics moved from the southern continent to Mexico, and has spent decades struggling against the expanding power of armed gangs that dominate entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and enlist youths. The nation's homicide rate is triple the world average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a extremely close presidential election of which the ballot tally has been delayed for days, with officials and experts condemning efforts by the US president, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

“It never occurred to me I would go through this tragedy,” said the young woman, who, since being deported on 22 November, has been residing at her relatives' house in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

An ‘Blatant Violation’ Says Her Lawyer

Her rapid expulsion – less than two days after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the starkest cases of alleged violations under Trump’s mass deportation initiative.

“Her case is an unconstitutional horror show,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based Todd Pomerleau, who has represented other notable ICE detainees.

“She received no explanation why she was detained,” said the attorney. “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 talk to an lawyer,” he added.

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

Official Statement and Juridical Disputes

Trump administration officials repeatedly said the primary target of enforcement actions 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 not a crime but a civil infraction.

A federal agency representative said López, “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 lawyer said that no one was ever shown the deportation order, and that even if it exists, a federal law stipulates 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,” argued Pomerleau.

“Her mother came to the US because of how horrific the conditions were in Honduras, where criminal groups were murdering and threatening people … They came here just like the early settlers centuries ago, for a brighter future and to escape persecution,” explained the attorney.

Conditions in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a large out-migration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a Soros justice fellow who researches deportees in the region. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, the majority heading to the US.

In 2014, when López’s family fled Honduras, their home town, this urban center, was considered the murder capital of the globe and their neighbourhood, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“Young people and households that I have spoken with from there described a very strong presence of criminal organizations who forced many residents to flee,” said Kennedy.

Gang violence has a devastating impact on females, having been the primary cause of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Teenage girls are especially vulnerable, making up the largest share of 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.

Fighting for Return and Hope

Pomerleau said they are now waiting for an official explanation from the American authorities to the court as to why the emergency order barring her deportation was not respected.

“There is a chance the administration will say: ‘Sorry, we erred here, and we’re going to {bring her back|facilitate her return.’ That would be the easy and reasonable thing to do.

“Yet 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 demand a remedy,” he said.

“We will not cease until we she is returned”.

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

“I want to be able to progress and maybe resume my education, whether here or by finishing my term at the university. And one day, to be able to see my family and my loved ones again,” she said.

Her university, the institution she was enrolled at in Massachusetts, issued a public comment addressing her case and saying that “the priority remains on assisting the individual and their relatives”.

“My main goal in the US was always to pursue an education,” said she. “This event to me is unjust, because we came to study and work hard, to move forward in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”