The holiday surprise was supposed to be simple: a 19-year-old college student flying from Boston to Austin to see her family for Thanksgiving. Instead, it became a federal ambush that ended with her deported to a country she hasn’t known since childhood.

Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a business major at Babson College in Wellesley, arrived at Boston Logan International Airport last Thursday like any other student heading home for the holiday break. She had cleared security without incident and was preparing to board. But when she scanned her ticket, an airline employee redirected her to a customer service desk. Moments later, according to her attorney, federal agents appeared, offered no explanation, and led her away.

From there, the story took a darker turn. Lopez Belloza was driven to ICE’s Burlington field office in an unmarked car, held without clear answers, and cut off from her family. She had come to the United States in 2014 at the age of eight. An immigration judge ordered her removal in 2015, but the order was never enforced. She remained, going to school, building a life, and planning for a future her family believed was secure.

“They wouldn’t tell her why she was being detained,” her attorney, Todd Pomerleau, told The Boston Globe. “She didn’t understand it at all.” He later described the tactics used to detain her as an “unconstitutional bag job,” calling her “a Dreamer living a draconian nightmare right now.”

After two days in custody, ICE flew her to Texas—not to reunite her with her family, but as a layover on the way to Honduras. She was put on a removal flight over the weekend and dropped into San Pedro Sula, where her grandparents live. Only then, nearly 48 hours after her detention, was she allowed to call her parents. They had spent the weekend frantic, unable to locate their daughter, unsure whether she was safe, and fully unaware she had already been expelled from the country.

A DHS spokesperson offered a starkly different account, calling Lopez Belloza “an illegal alien from Honduras” with a decade-old removal order who had been “illegally” in the country since 2015. “Lopez-Belloza will remain in ICE custody pending removal,” the spokesperson said, even though by then she had already been sent out of the United States.

Now, instead of spending Thanksgiving with her younger sisters in Texas, Lopez Belloza is stranded thousands of miles away in a country she hasn’t seen in more than ten years. Her future—her education, her home, her legal status—is suddenly uncertain.