🔗 Share this article

Any Lucia López Belloza had not seen her mother and father and two little sisters since starting her freshman year at a business college near the city of Boston in the late summer. A generous individual gave her airfare so she could travel back to Austin and surprise them for Thanksgiving.

The teenage business student was already at the boarding gate at Boston airport when she was told there was an “issue” with her travel documents; when she reached customer service, she was restrained and taken into custody by what she understood to be two federal immigration agents.

“I thought: ‘I was travelling to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the shock will be that I won’t be there,’” López said.

She was allowed a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a legal representative. A day later, a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be reviewed.

However the following day, she was chained at her wrists, feet and waist and deported to her birth Honduras, a nation which she departed at the age of seven and of which she has scarcely any recollection.

A Dangerous Land López Was Deported To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a primary trafficking routes for drugs transported from the southern continent to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades grappling with the growing influence of armed gangs that dominate whole districts, extort families and recruit youths. The country’s murder 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 several days, with officials and experts condemning efforts by the US president, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

“I never thought I would go through this tragedy,” said the young woman, who, since being sent away on 22 November, has been residing at her relatives' house in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s economic hub.

A ‘Blatant Violation’ According to Her Lawyer

Her swift deportation – under 48 hours after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the clearest examples of alleged abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal initiative.

“Her case is an unconstitutional nightmare,” said her lawyer, the Boston-based legal representative, who has defended other high-profile ICE detainees.

“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” 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 continued.

“If that isn’t unconstitutional, I don’t know what is,” Pomerleau concluded.

Government Response and Juridical Disputes

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 no criminal record. Being undocumented in the US is a civil matter but a administrative violation.

A federal agency representative said López, “an undocumented individual”, was taken into custody because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an court ordered her removed from the country in 2015, a decade ago. She has remained unlawfully 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 apprehensions in such instances can only take place within a 90-day window after the order is finalized – “not a decade after the fact,” said the lawyer.

“Her mother brought her here because of how horrific the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the early settlers centuries ago, for a better life and to find safety,” said the attorney.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “has a significant emigration problem”, said a social science researcher, a academic who researches deportees in the region. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans left the country, the majority traveling to the US.

In that year, when López’s family fled Honduras, their home town, this urban center, was considered the most violent city of the world 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 overwhelming presence of gangs who forced multiple families to leave,” noted Kennedy.

Gang violence takes a particularly heavy toll on women, having been the main driver of femicides in Honduras last year. Teenage girls are particularly affected, making up the largest share of female victims of sexual violence.

“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 Future

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

“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 sensible and just thing to do.

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

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

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

“I want to be able to move forward and perhaps continue my studies, whether here or by completing my semester at the college. And one day, to be able to reunite with my family and my family again,” she expressed.

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

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” stated she. “This event to me is unjust, because we came to learn and strive, to advance in pursuit of that American dream so many of us dream of.”