She left the US after seven months in ICE custody, but still dreams of a life in America

Back in her home country of Honduras, Allison Bustillo reflects on being separated from her family, the experience of migrant families in the US, and what North Carolina and America mean to her.

On the morning of Sept. 15, Allison Bustillo took her final steps in the United States. 

In an interview with Cardinal & Pine, Bustillo recalled how “surreal” it felt to board her flight at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and leave “the only country that I knew for so many years. The only country that I called home.”

An undocumented immigrant who moved from Honduras to the United States as a child with her mother and siblings, Bustillo spent her formative years living in Shelby, North Carolina, where she graduated middle and high school, before moving to Charlotte to begin her career journey as an aspiring nurse. 

Her life was turned upside down when she was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Charlotte on Feb 20.

Within days, the 20-year-old was sent to the Stewart Detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia. She was never charged with a crime despite being held for seven months. She suffered through abysmal treatment and conditions in detention, which Cardinal & Pine reported on earlier this year.

After seven months in detention, with her health deteriorating and no resolution in sight, Bustillo made the decision to voluntarily depart the US on a commercial flight rather than be deported. Despite the anguishing seven months in detention and the treatment she suffered at the hands of the US government, Bustillo says she’s still grateful for America.

“One definitely being my family that’s there. And two, it’s the country that took me in as their own, and gave me the opportunity to be there, and I will never forget that,” Bustillo said in an interview from Honduras. 

As an eight-year-old immigrant who spoke no English, Bustillo said America opened doors for her.

“I have always been grateful, ever since I got to the US. I have always been grateful to have, one, a better living… As being undocumented, not a lot of migrants have the opportunity to have schooling and to become a CNA [certified nursing assistant] or nurse. I would always be thankful [to] that country.” 

After 11 years in the US, Bustillo identified more as an English speaker than Spanish.

“My English is better than my Spanish,” she said.

It’s the very fact that Bustillo was so grateful for her life in the US that made her time in detention so difficult. 

“I tell my mom all the time, ‘why did this happen to me?’ I always thought that America was just amazing, and that this wasn’t going to happen to me.”

There were moments when she wondered if she would ever leave the facility. 

“I was thinking ‘oh my gosh, what’s going to happen with me? What’s going to be the end of this?” Bustillo recalled.

She also sought to dispel any notion that her speaking out about her detention was anti-American, citing her desire to return to the US.

“That’s definitely my dream. I’ve gotten a lot of comments about people saying ‘if she wants to come back to the US, why is she speaking bad about the government’… I’ve been speaking about my experience and what happened with what’s going on with ICE, not the country itself, because I have always been grateful ever since I got to the US,” she said.

@cardinalandpine

Allison Bustillo was just 8 years old when she arrived in the United States with her mom and brother. As part of her American dream, she learned English, graduated high school, became a certified nursing assistant, and was planning to start a bachelor’s degree in nursing. In February, that dream became a nightmare when Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained her for seven months without charges, leading to her to choose to self-deport back to Honduras, the country her family fled. WATCH the full video to hear what Allison told Cardinal & Pine about why she would want to return to the US.

♬ original sound – Cardinal & Pine – Cardinal & Pine

Re-adjusting to life in Honduras

Bustillo says she is still adjusting to being back in Honduras, a country she left as a young child, and is currently living with family in the capital region of Tegucigalpa.

“It’s definitely been very hard to get used to being somewhere you haven’t been in 12 years,” she said. “It was a very drastic change, and getting used to here has not been very easy for me.”

While she continues to adjust to the reality of being back in her home country, her health has improved since she’s been out of  ICE custody. She suffers from scoliosis, a condition that causes a curved spine, which worsened while she was in detention.

“I can say that I’m finally recovering. I spent [seven] months in the detention center, and basically the entire entire time I was sick. I would get told that ‘you’re okay,’ ‘nothing’s wrong with you. It’s just anxiety.’ Everything would be labeled as anxiety,” she said. 

Bustillo is very close with her mom, Keily, and three brothers who remain in North Carolina. She says being separated from them has been difficult, but that they’re able to stay in touch regularly.

“They’re very thankful that I came out of that place, but they all the time are like ‘we miss you,’ ‘I wish you were here,’ or they would send me pictures, ‘look, we’re here at your favorite restaurant. I wish you were here,’” she said.

Bustillo says she’s still adjusting to her new reality of being separated from her mom and brothers, whom she has not seen in person for nearly nine months.

“Sometimes my mom calls me and she’s like, ‘Hey Allison, can you help your brothers with homework, and I’m like, ‘yeah, I can help, but through a video call.’ We’re taking it slowly, and this is what we have right now,” Bustillo said. 

Despite being thousands of miles and a time zone away, she says she’s also able to stay in touch with friends in North Carolina.

“I do speak to them every day. I get video calls. They FaceTime me all the time. They’re always checking up on me through messages, calls, or social media,” she said.

Professionally, Bustillo remains committed to becoming a nurse. She’s in the process of getting her high school diploma and credits from community college transferred to a university in Honduras. 

“I have always said that my dream will never be taken away from me,” she said. 

@cardinalandpine

Since 2010, millions of people from Central America have migrated to the United States in search of a better life. In 2014, Allison Bustillo was one of them when her mom brought her and her brother to the US from Honduras. Bustillo, now 20, encourages Americans to have conversations with people like her mom and millions of others who made the difficult decision to leave their home countries for a better life and go beyond the stereotypes often used to describe families like hers.

♬ original sound – Cardinal & Pine

What she wants Americans to understand

Bustillo, her mother, and her brother, Hanzel, made the long journey from Honduras to the US in 2014. They sought to escape gang violence in their home country and seek a better life in America.

Hondurans have been the fastest growing migrant group to the United States since 2010. Overall, immigration from Central America has increased by 42% during this time.

“I had no idea I was coming to a whole new country. To me, it was just ‘if my mom says so, I have to do it,’” Bustillo recalled.

She remembers the journey lasting around two weeks, with the family staying at a refugee center in Mexico, and being chased by Mexican authorities.

“It’s definitely a difficult journey, and not just for my mom or me, as well as other people who come further. You encounter very different situations throughout your way to the US, and it’s definitely hard because once you get to the US, you have to adapt to a new country, have to adapt to a language, to the culture,” Bustillo said.

Polls show immigration is consistently a top issue for voters. As a candidate, and since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has orchestrated a mass deportation program, pledging to deport millions of undocumented immigrants from the country. As part of Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ ICE and other immigration enforcement efforts were funded to the tune of $170 billion over four years. 

While the president claims his plan is to remove criminals from the country, as of Sept. 2025, 71.5% of detainees had no criminal convictions, according to ICE data analyzed by TRAC, a non-profit organization. 

After Bustillo opted to voluntarily leave the country, her attorney, Martin Rosenbluth, told Cardinal & Pine via email that the reason she and other immigrants without a criminal record were being targeted was because of a Trump administration directive that ICE arrest 3,000 people per day.

 “They can’t do that without deporting people like Allison who have lived here most of their lives and have no criminal record,” Rosenbluth said.

Since Trump’s mass deportation plan ramped up, thousands of videos and stories from all over the country have gone viral, depicting ICE violently arresting farm workers, day laborers outside Home Depots, food vendors, and even daycare teachers at their schools.

Despite a majority of Americans saying that ICE has been ‘too tough’ in their methods, Trump said just days ago in an interview with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell that ICE raids “haven’t gone far enough,” in his view.

Bustillo hopes that by seeing the reality of Trump’s agenda and hearing from people like her, Americans will gain a new perspective on the realities families like hers face, and why they come to the US.

“I think that people have a stereotype of the migrant—that all of them are criminals, that all of them are bad people. They’re being labeled that they want to take jobs from the Americans,” she said. “I feel like they should sit down and listen to some of these stories, and listen to them, and ask them why they left their country.” 

Eleven years removed from her family’s arrival in the US, she has an appreciation for people like her mom who risk the journey to America.

“I understand now why people and why families leave,” she said. “It’s for them to give their families a better future. To give their children a better future, and I was just very, very grateful my mom did that for us.”