Shelby woman forced to leave US after months in ICE custody

SHELBY, N.C. — A Shelby woman who came to the U.S. when she was 8 years old is being deported after six months of being in ICE custody in Georgia.

Allison Bustillo, now 20, said she is being forced to leave, alone.

Bustillo decided on Tuesday in court to withdraw her asylum case and self-deport back to Honduras.

Bustillo graduated as an academic scholar from Crest High School two years ago.

“I am going to ask for mercy,” Bustillo said.

Channel 9’s sister station, Telemundo Charlotte, spoke with Bustillo exclusively last weekend from the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia where she’s been held since late February.

ICE agents arrested Bustillo in her east Charlotte apartment where she lived with her mother and three brothers, one of whom has autism.

Channel 9 couldn’t find a criminal record for Bustillo.

She told Telemundo she is a nursing student on scholarship at Gardner-Webb University.

“I’m not a criminal,” Bustillo said. “I literally came here when I was 8 years old to look for a better life, and this is how they are treating me.”

Bustillo’s mother, Kelly Chinchilla, said her daughter was desperate after being imprisoned for more than six months.

“We have fought all this time so that she could be released and return home, but as a mother, I also understand her, because she is at a point where she is desperate,” Chinchilla said.

Bustillo’s attorney, Martin Rosenbluth, was able to get her a voluntary departure despite not qualifying for it.

“Technically, under the law, she wasn’t eligible,” said Rosenbluth.

That means she will leave the country without a deportation order.

Her mother said that’s not justice and her daughter going to Honduras would be terrifying.

“The only memory my daughter has of Honduras is when someone put a gun to our heads,” the mother said.

Telemundo said Bustillo will now leave the country on a commercial flight.

Bustillo said ICE agents arrested her after officers came to her house looking for someone who wasn’t living there anymore.

The head of ICE has said agents will arrest anyone they find in the country who is undocumented even if they don’t have a criminal record.

The Homeland Security secretary said 1.6 million undocumented immigrants have left the U.S. in her first 200 days on the job.

VIDEO: Parents express fear over ICE presence near Charlotte schools

Parents express fear over ICE presence near Charlotte schools

©2025 Cox Media Group