A 21‑year‑old Honduran woman who spent almost eight months in immigration detention has returned to her home country after agreeing to a voluntary departure.
Allison Bustillo, a nursing student who completed a certified nursing assistant program at Cleveland Community College in Shelby, North Carolina, said she was at home with her three minor siblings in Charlotte on February 20, 2025, when FBI agents entered without a search warrant.
“They knocked my door down … pointed firearms at us, and they were questioning us,” Bustillo told Newsweek in an interview.
“Allison Athziri Bustillo Chinchilla, an illegal alien from Honduras, was arrested by ICE following the FBI encountering her while executing a federal search warrant related to drug trafficking,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) told Newsweek.
Immigration enforcement in the United States has significantly increased under President Donald Trump’s administration, with federal authorities increasing arrests, detentions and deportations nationwide under an aggressive policy.
DHS said Bustillo entered the United States in 2014 unlawfully and was later released under the Obama administration. She accepted voluntary departure and was removed to Honduras on September 15, 2025, the agency said.
After her arrest, Bustillo said she was transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and held in the Stewart Detention Center, where she remained for almost eight months. She said she attended numerous court hearings, including bond hearings that were canceled or had no jurisdiction.
She also said that at various points “the judge had no idea what to do with me,” and that an ICE supervisor told her she did not have a formal removal order.
Bustillo said her time in custody was traumatic and challenging, with difficult conditions and at times harsh treatment.
She said the “food is not great at all,” she developed medical issues, and some guards were “very mean to us.”
Bustillo said she developed stomach issues during her time in detention, which she did not have previously. She said she was later diagnosed with esophagitis and cysts, which she attributed to the food provided while in custody.
Faced with prolonged detention and uncertainty about her legal status, she ultimately accepted voluntary departure, signing paperwork and returning to Honduras on a commercial flight in September.
Her decision to accept voluntary removal means she left the United States without a formal deportation order on her record, a choice often viewed as the least damaging option for detainees with limited legal recourse.
DHS is encouraging individuals who are in the country without legal status to voluntarily leave the United States using the CBP Home app. Migrants without legal status may receive $2,600 and a free flight if they choose to self-deport.
“I feel like it’s very unfair. A lot of injustice has been done with me by keeping me detained for almost eight months. I did come out of there with a lot of trauma, a lot of medical issues that I now have to face with,” Bustillo said.
She said she hoped to return to the United States in the future to see her family, who remain in the country.
“It’s been very harsh, very hard. It’s been a little difficult to adapt here. Life here is totally different from the life that I used to have in the States,” Bustillo said, adding, “All I wanted to do was make the country better.”
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