College Student Recounts ‘Nightmarish’ Immigration Removal to Her Native Country at Thanksgiving

The Lucia López Belloza had been separated from her parents and two younger sisters since starting her first semester at Babson College near Boston in the late summer. An acquaintance gave her airfare so she could travel back to Austin and give them a surprise for Thanksgiving.

The teenage business student was standing at the departure gate at Logan Airport when she was informed there was an “issue” with her travel documents; when she reached the service desk, she was restrained and taken into custody by what she believed to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

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

She was allowed a single call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a legal representative. A day later, a U.S. judge granted an injunction barring her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be examined.

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

The Dangerous Country She Was Deported To

Home to about 11 million people, Honduras is one of the main trafficking routes for narcotics transported from South America to Mexico, and has spent decades grappling with the growing power of violent cartels that dominate entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and recruit young people. The country’s homicide rate is triple the global average.

Honduras is also in a political maelstrom, with a knife-edge presidential election of which the ballot tally has been delayed for days, with local politicians and experts condemning repeated attempts by the US president, Donald Trump, to influence the electoral process.

“It never occurred to me I would experience such an ordeal,” said López, who, since being sent away on 22 November, has been staying at her relatives' house in a major Honduran city, Honduras’s economic hub.

A ‘Blatant Violation’ According to Her Lawyer

Her swift deportation – under 48 hours after she was detained at the airport – has attracted international scrutiny as one of the starkest examples of reported abuses under Trump’s large-scale removal policy.

“This situation is an legally dubious horror show,” said her lawyer, the Massachusetts legal representative, who has represented other high-profile ICE detainees.

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

“If that isn’t a breach of rights, it is hard to imagine what would be,” Pomerleau said.

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

A federal agency spokesperson said López, “an illegal alien”, was arrested 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 neither she nor he was ever shown the deportation 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,” argued the lawyer.

“Her mother brought her here 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 find safety,” explained the attorney.

Life in the Honduran City

Honduras “has a large emigration problem”, said a social science researcher, a Soros justice fellow who studies deportees in the region. In the last ten years, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, most traveling to the US.

In 2014, when the student's family fled Honduras, their home town, this urban center, was considered the most violent city of the world and their neighbourhood, La Pradera, was one of the most dangerous.

“The children and families that I have spoken with from there described a overwhelming presence of criminal organizations who compelled many residents to leave,” said the researcher.

Organized crime takes a particularly heavy toll on females, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Young women are particularly affected, 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 female, 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 formal response from the American authorities to the judge as to why the judge's order stopping her deportation was ignored.

“It’s possible the administration will say: ‘We apologize, 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 strong legal case that the judicial ruling was disobeyed and demand a remedy,” he explained.

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

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

“My desire is to be able to progress and perhaps continue my studies, whether here 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.

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

“My main goal in the US was always to pursue an education,” said she. “This event to me is unjust, because we went there to learn and strive, to advance in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us had.”