Student Details ‘Horror Show’ ICE Removal to Honduras at the Holiday

The Lucia López Belloza had been away from her parents and two little sisters since beginning her freshman year at a business college near Boston in August. A generous individual 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 Boston airport when she was told there was an “problem” with her boarding pass; when she went to customer service, she was restrained and taken into custody by what she believed to be two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

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

She was permitted a phone call to her parents, who immediately reached out to a legal representative. The next day, a U.S. judge granted an emergency order prohibiting her removal from the US for at least 72 hours until her case could be reviewed.

But the next morning, she was shackled at her wrists, ankles and waist and expelled to her native Central American nation, a nation which she departed at the tender age of seven and of which she has almost no memory.

A Volatile Country She Was Sent To

A nation home to about eleven million people, Honduras is a key trafficking routes for drugs moved from South America to its northern neighbor, and has spent decades struggling against the growing influence of violent cartels that dominate entire neighbourhoods, terrorize families and enlist young people. The nation's murder rate is triple the world average.

Honduras is also in a state of political turmoil, with a extremely close national vote of which the vote count has been delayed for several days, with local politicians and analysts criticising repeated attempts by the American leader, Donald Trump, to sway the electoral process.

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

An ‘Unconstitutional Horror Show’ According to Her Lawyer

Her lightning-fast deportation – under two days after she was arrested at the airport – has attracted global attention as one of the clearest cases of reported violations under Trump’s large-scale removal initiative.

“Her case is an legally dubious nightmare,” said her attorney, the Boston-based Todd Pomerleau, who has defended other notable ICE detainees.

“She wasn’t told why she was detained,” said the attorney. “She was shackled like she was a hardened criminal, and then deported to Honduras with no opportunity to have a legal hearing or even talk to an lawyer,” he added.

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

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 detained by ICE agents – López had no criminal record. Being undocumented in the US is a civil matter but a administrative violation.

A federal agency representative said the individual, “an undocumented individual”, was arrested because she “arrived in the country in 2014 and an court issued a removal order from the country in 2015, a decade ago. She has remained unlawfully in the country since.”

Her lawyer said that neither she nor he was ever shown the removal order, and that even if it exists, a U.S. statute stipulates that arrests in such cases can only take place within a three-month period after the order is finalized – “not 10 years later,” said Pomerleau.

“Her mum brought her here because of how terrible the conditions were in Honduras, where gang members were killing and extorting people … They came here just like the Pilgrims centuries ago, for a better life and to find safety,” explained the lawyer.

Life in the Honduran City

Honduras “faces a significant out-migration problem”, said Elizabeth G Kennedy, a Soros justice fellow who studies deportees in the region. In the past decade, about a fifth of Hondurans have left the country, most traveling to the US.

In 2014, when López’s family left Honduras, their city, this urban center, was considered the most violent city of the globe and their community, La Pradera, was one of the most violent.

“Young people and households that I have spoken with from there described a overwhelming presence of criminal organizations who compelled many residents to flee,” noted Kennedy.

Organized crime has a devastating impact on women, having been the main driver of gender-based killings in Honduras recently. Teenage girls are especially vulnerable, making up the largest share of female victims of assault.

“And now you have a young woman back in a country where it’s very dangerous to be a young woman, who was given no due process rights in the US,” she stated.

Fighting for Return and Hope

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

“It’s possible the administration will say: ‘Sorry, we erred here, and we’re going to {bring her back|facilitate her return.’ That would be the sensible and just 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 disobeyed and demand a remedy,” he explained.

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

The student said she was trying to stay focused: “I try to be as optimistic and as strong as I can.

“I want to be able to progress and perhaps resume my education, whether in Honduras or by finishing my term at the university. And one day, to be able to see my parents and my loved ones again,” she expressed.

Her university, the school she was attending 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 pursue an education,” stated she. “What happened to me is unjust, because we went there to learn and work hard, to advance in search of that promise of opportunity so many of us dream of.”