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The joyous anticipation of family reunion vanished in an instant. Moments before she was supposed to board her plane, airport staff told Lopez Belloza her boarding pass was incorrect. Believing it was a simple ticketing error, she headed to customer service, unaware that her life was about to be irrevocably altered. Her lawyer, Todd Pomerleau, recounted the horrifying scene: she was “surrounded, (placed) in handcuffs, and dragged out of the airport.” The image is chilling – a young, aspiring student, bound and forcibly removed from a public space, her pleas unheard. But the terror didn’t end there. Pomerleau further detailed the dehumanizing treatment: “She had chains around her ankles. Handcuffs on her wrists.” In an act so swift and severe it defied belief, this 19-year-old, who had merely sought to spend a holiday with her loved ones, was “Put on a plane and deported to a country she hadn’t been to in like 12 years. It’s beyond the pale.” Her destination? Honduras, a country she had left behind as a 7-year-old when her parents sought asylum in the United States. How could a simple flight home become a one-way ticket to a forgotten past, overseen by federal officials?
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