🔗 Share this article

The Lucia López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since beginning her first semester at Babson College near Boston in August. An acquaintance provided her with airfare so she could travel back to her family in Texas and surprise them for the holiday gathering.

The 19-year-old business student was standing at the departure gate at Boston airport when she was told there was an “problem” with her boarding pass; when she reached customer service, she was handcuffed and arrested by what she believed to be two federal immigration agents.

“My thought was: ‘I was travelling to surprise 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 lawyer. The next day, a U.S. judge issued an emergency order prohibiting her removal from the US for at least three days until her court proceedings could be examined.

However the following day, she was chained at her wrists, ankles and waist and forcibly removed to her birth Central American nation, a nation which she left at the tender age of seven and of which she has virtually no memory.

The Dangerous Land She Was Sent To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a primary trafficking routes for narcotics moved from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent many years grappling with the expanding power of armed gangs that dominate whole districts, extort families and enlist young people. The nation's homicide rate is triple 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 days, with officials and experts condemning efforts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

“I never thought I would experience this tragedy,” stated the young woman, who, since being sent away on 22 November, has been residing at her grandparents’ home in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

A ‘Blatant Violation’ According to Legal Counsel

Her swift deportation – under 48 hours after she was detained at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the starkest examples of reported abuses under Trump’s mass deportation initiative.

“This situation is an unconstitutional horror show,” said her attorney, the Boston-based legal representative, who has represented other notable ICE detention cases.

“She received no explanation why she was detained,” added Pomerleau. “She was shackled like she was a dangerous felon, and then deported to Honduras with no opportunity to have a legal hearing or even consult with an lawyer,” he added.

“Should this not be considered unconstitutional, it is hard to imagine what would be,” he said.

Official Response and Legal Contradictions

Federal officials have stated the primary target of arrests and deportations was individuals with serious records, but – like many others apprehended by immigration officers – López had a clean record. Being undocumented in the US is a civil matter but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) representative said the individual, “an undocumented individual”, was taken into custody because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an court issued a removal order from the country in 2015, over 10 years ago. She has illegally stayed in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that neither she nor he was ever shown the removal order, and that even if it does exist, a federal law specifies that arrests in such instances can only take place within a three-month period after the order is finalized – “not 10 years later,” said Pomerleau.

“Her mum 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 Pilgrims centuries ago, for a brighter future and to find safety,” said the attorney.

Conditions in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a large out-migration issue”, said a social science researcher, a academic who researches deportees in Central America. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, the majority traveling to the US.

In that year, when the student's family left Honduras, their city, this urban center, was considered the murder capital of the world and their neighbourhood, a specific district, was one of the most violent.

“The children and families that I’ve interviewed from there reported a very strong presence of gangs who compelled multiple families to flee,” said the researcher.

Organized crime has a devastating impact on women, having been the primary cause of gender-based killings in Honduras last year. Young women are particularly affected, making up the largest share of female victims of assault.

“Now you have a teenager back in a place where it’s very dangerous to be a female, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she stated.

Pursuing for Return and Future

The student's lawyer said they are now awaiting an official explanation from the US government to the judge as to why the judge's order stopping her deportation was not respected.

“It’s possible the administration 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.

“Yet they might have a different approach, and that’s going to require me to make a forceful argument that the judicial ruling was violated and seek a solution,” he said.

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

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

“I want to be able to progress and maybe continue my studies, whether here or by completing my term at the university. And eventually, to be able to see my parents and my family again,” she said.

Her university, the school she was attending in Massachusetts, issued a statement regarding her situation and saying that “the priority remains on assisting the student and their relatives”.

“My primary objective in the US was always to pursue an education,” said she. “What happened to me isn’t fair, because we came to learn and work hard, to advance in pursuit of that American dream so many of us had.”