College Student Describes ‘Terrifying’ Immigration Expulsion to Her Native Country at the Holiday

Any Lucía López Belloza had been away from her mother and father and two younger sisters since beginning her freshman year at a business college near Boston in August. A generous individual gave her plane tickets so she could travel back to Austin and give them a surprise for Thanksgiving.

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

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

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who contacted a lawyer. A day later, a federal judge granted an injunction prohibiting her deportation from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be examined.

However the following day, she was chained at her hands, ankles and torso and deported to her birth Central American nation, a nation which she departed at the age of seven and of which she has virtually no recollection.

The Volatile Country She Was Sent To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is one of the main transit corridors for drugs moved from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades struggling against the growing influence of violent cartels that control entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and enlist young people. The nation's murder rate is three times the global average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a extremely close national vote of which the vote count has dragged on for days, with local politicians and experts condemning repeated attempts 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 November 22nd, has been residing at her grandparents’ home in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second-largest city.

An ‘Blatant Violation’ According to Legal Counsel

Her swift deportation – less than two days after she was detained at the airport – has drawn global attention as one of the starkest cases of reported abuses under Trump’s mass deportation policy.

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

“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” said Pomerleau. “She was shackled like she was some type of hardened criminal, and then sent to Honduras with no chance to have a legal hearing or even consult with an lawyer,” he continued.

“Should this not be considered a breach of rights, I don’t know what is,” he concluded.

Government Statement and Legal Contradictions

Trump administration officials have stated the primary target of arrests and deportations was individuals with serious records, but – like most immigrants detained by immigration officers – López had no criminal record. Lacking legal status in the US is a civil matter but a civil infraction.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson 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 illegally stayed in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that neither she nor he was ever shown the deportation order, and that even if it does exist, a U.S. statute specifies that apprehensions in such cases can only take place within a three-month period after the order is issued – “not 10 years later,” argued Pomerleau.

“Her mother brought her here because of how horrific the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They arrived just like the early settlers 400 years ago, for a brighter future and to escape persecution,” said the attorney.

Life in San Pedro Sula

Honduras “has a significant emigration issue”, said a social science researcher, a Soros justice fellow who studies returned migrants in Central America. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, most traveling to the US.

In that year, when the student's family fled Honduras, their home town, San Pedro Sula, was considered the murder capital of the world and their neighbourhood, La Pradera, was one of the most violent.

“Young people and households that I’ve interviewed from there reported a very strong presence of criminal organizations who forced multiple families to flee,” said the researcher.

Gang violence has a devastating impact 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.

“And now you have a young woman back in a place where the risks are high to be a female, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she added.

Pursuing for Return and Future

Pomerleau said they are now waiting for an formal response from the US government to the court as to why the judge's order stopping her removal was ignored.

“It’s possible the government 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.

“But they might have a different approach, and that’s going to require 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 stay focused: “I am trying to be as positive and as strong as I can.

“My desire is to be able to progress and perhaps resume my education, whether in Honduras or by finishing my semester at the college. And eventually, to be able to reunite with my family and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

Babson College, the institution she was enrolled at in Massachusetts, issued a statement addressing her case and saying that “the priority remains on assisting the student and their family”.

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