20-year-old student to self deport after 6 months in ICE custody

Allison Bustillo Chinchilla has chosen to return to Honduras after six months in ICE detention with no charges. 

This story is a follow up to one written previously about the detention of Allison Bustillo Chinchilla and her family.

On Feb. 24, Allison Bustillo Chinchilla was taken into ICE custody in Charlotte. She was held for several days alongside her mother and brother before being separated and sent to the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, Georgia.

For six months, Bustillo Chinchilla has been held there despite being charged with no crime. During this period, she told Cardinal & Pine that her health was declining, and she was not able to access medical treatment. She suffers from scoliosis, a spinal condition.

“I am currently struggling with my medication refills, and that has been an issue ever since I got here. They are not treating me properly, how I’m supposed to be treated,” she said in July.

On Aug. 26, Bustillo Chinchilla made the difficult decision to self-deport to Honduras, her home country.

In text messages, her mother Keily Chinchilla expressed frustration and sadness that the situation had come to this.

“It is difficult and it hurts me to know that she will leave,” she said.

She told WUNC after her daughter’s decision that the conditions at the Stewart Detention facility forced her to agree to self-removal from the US.

How we got here

Winston-Salem-based attorney Helen Parsonage filed a petition in federal court seeking Bustillo Chinchilla’s release from ICE custody.

“ICE claims publicly to be detaining criminals and immigrants who pose a danger to the community. Allison is neither of these. She should be released to pursue her case from her home with her family,” a post on Parsonage’s Facebook page reads.

Earlier this year, Allison planned to pursue her bachelor’s degree in nursing, and had been accepted to Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs on a scholarship. She previously graduated from Crest High School in Cleveland County and was a certified nursing assistant.

Chinchilla described her daughter as hardworking and compassionate. “She likes taking care of elderly people in her work, and also takes care of her autistic brother. She came here as a child full of dreams and goals, and has worked hard every day to achieve them.”

Despite having been in detention for five months at the time, Bustillo Chinchilla yearned to restore her life in America, the only one she’s known since she was eight years old.

“I consider this my home…I do still want to continue living here despite everything that has happened to me,” she said.

Chinchilla says she is worried about her daughter going back to Honduras, a country she doesn’t remember and faced danger in as a child.

“The only memory my daughter has of Honduras is when someone put a gun to our heads,” she told WSOC-TV.

As for the impact on the family, Chinchilla told Cardinal & Pine she does not know how she and her other children will live without her daughter in their daily lives.

“She was my right hand, my best friend, my everything, she said. “I don’t know how to continue without her. She took care of her autistic brother and her little brother. I don’t know how to tell them that she’s not coming home.”

Cardinal & Pine reached out to Parsonage for comment on Bustillo Chinchilla’s case but did not hear back by the time of publication.