College Student Details ‘Nightmarish’ Immigration Deportation to Honduras at Thanksgiving

The Lucía López Belloza had been separated from her mother and father and two younger sisters since starting her first semester at a business college near the city of Boston in the late summer. A generous individual gave her plane tickets so she could fly home to her family in Texas and give them a surprise for the holiday gathering.

The 19-year-old university student was already at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was told there was an “problem” with her travel documents; when she went to the service desk, she was handcuffed and arrested by what she understood to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

“My thought was: ‘I was travelling to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving, and now the surprise will be that I am not coming,’” the student explained.

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a lawyer. The next day, a federal judge issued an injunction barring her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her court proceedings could be reviewed.

But the next morning, she was chained at her wrists, ankles and waist and expelled to her native Honduras, a nation which she departed at the tender age of seven and of which she has scarcely any recollection.

The Volatile Land She Was Deported Back To

A nation home to about 11 million people, Honduras is a key transit corridors for narcotics transported from South America to Mexico, and has spent decades grappling with the expanding influence of armed gangs that dominate whole districts, extort families and recruit youths. The country’s murder rate is triple the world average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a extremely close presidential election of which the vote count has been delayed for several days, with local politicians and analysts condemning efforts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway Hondurans’ votes.

“I never thought I would experience this tragedy,” said López, who, since being deported on November 22nd, has been residing at her grandparents’ home in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s second-largest city.

A ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ Says Her Lawyer

Her rapid expulsion – less than 48 hours after she was arrested at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the starkest examples 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 defended other high-profile ICE detention cases.

“She wasn’t told why she was arrested,” added the attorney. “They restrained her like she was some type of dangerous felon, and then sent to Honduras with no chance to have a court hearing or even consult with an lawyer,” he added.

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

Government Response and Juridical Disputes

Trump administration officials have stated the primary target of enforcement actions was dangerous criminals, but – like many others apprehended by ICE agents – López had a clean record. Being undocumented in the US is a civil matter but a administrative violation.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said the individual, “an illegal alien”, was taken into custody because she “entered the country in 2014 and an immigration judge 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 no one was ever shown the deportation order, and that even if it exists, a federal law specifies that apprehensions in such cases can only take place within a three-month period after the order is finalized – “not a decade after the fact,” argued Pomerleau.

“Her mum brought her here because of how horrific the circumstances were in Honduras, where gang members were murdering and threatening people … They arrived just like the early settlers centuries ago, for a better life and to find safety,” said the lawyer.

Conditions in the Honduran City

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

In 2014, when López’s family fled Honduras, their city, San Pedro Sula, was considered the murder capital of the world and their community, a specific district, was one of the most dangerous.

“Young people and households that I’ve interviewed from there described a overwhelming presence of gangs who forced multiple families to leave,” said Kennedy.

Organized crime takes a particularly heavy toll on females, having been the primary cause of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Teenage girls are especially vulnerable, making up the majority of victims of assault.

“Now you have a teenager back in a place where it’s very dangerous to be a young woman, who was given no legal recourse in the US,” she stated.

Fighting for Justice and Future

The student's lawyer said they are now waiting for an official explanation from the American authorities to the court as to why the judge's order stopping her removal was not respected.

“It’s possible the administration will say: ‘We apologize, we erred 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 different approach, and that would necessitate me to make a strong legal case that the judicial ruling was violated and demand a remedy,” he explained.

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

The student said she was trying to keep her mind occupied: “I try to be as positive and as resilient as I can.

“My desire is to be able to progress and maybe continue my studies, whether in Honduras or by completing my term at the university. And one day, to be able to reunite with my family and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

Babson College, the school she was attending in Massachusetts, issued a public comment regarding her case and saying that “our focus remains on supporting the individual and their relatives”.

“My main goal in the US was always to study,” said she. “This event to me is unjust, because we went there to study and work hard, to advance in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”