in Politics, Racism & Bigotry 694 Words

Let’s put a name on ICE detention: Allison Bustillo

This is a story I have been sitting on since last Tuesday. It is impossible to make sense of what has happened here locally.

I do not personally know the young woman or her family, but hearing this family’s story on WSOC-TV in Charlotte stopped me in my tracks. I have not been able to get the report off my mind.

Her family fled violence in Honduras in 2013 when Allison Bustillo was eight years old. They found a home in North Carolina. Allison studied hard. No one in the family ever broke the law, except for staying in the United States without proper documentation.

Allison wants to be a nurse. At 20 years old, she was studying nursing on a scholarship at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, until February 2025 – the day ICE agents showed up at her house. They were looking for someone who did not live there but, in the process, they took Allison from her home. This was traumatic for her family, which includes her brother who is on the autism spectrum.

Photo by Jennifer Grismer on Unsplash

Allison was taken 350 miles from her home to the ICE Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. She tried to get released. She had broken no laws. She had been brought into the United States as an eight-year-old child.

The Stewart Detention Center is operated by CoreCivic. CoreCivic contracted with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to operate the prison, which has an official capacity of 1,752 inmates.

The ICE agents who arrested Allison Bustillo did not have to identify themselves. They didn’t have to show a badge or an identification. They didn’t have to show their faces. But Allison Bustillo was not allowed those privileges, so without warning or due process she was taken from her home and placed in a federal detention center hundreds of miles from her family.

But no one in the Trump Administration cared. Not even after her family secured the services of an attorney.

One of the ironies is that Allison was not eligible for voluntary deportation, but she was stuck in that detention center for six months. Imagine! Six months!

Her attorney was finally able to get permission for her to leave the detention center and leave the country without a deportation order. She will board (or already has boarded) a commercial flight to Honduras. Alone.

A 20-year-old nursing student returning to the country she fled 12 years ago as a child whose family sought a safe life.

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

Here is a link to the local news report I saw last Tuesday, in case it is still accessible: https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/shelby-woman-forced-leave-us-after-months-ice-custody/RLPE6QKWOVGLXC6KHNEXT2Q5OU/.

My thoughts

I am embarrassed to be an American in 2025.

Trump was elected partly because he promised to get the illegal alien criminals out of our country. Perhaps some of the people who voted for him thought he would use legal means to accomplish that. Perhaps they thought he would only remove the hardened criminals.

They were horribly mistaken.

He has repeatedly said that only “the worst of the worst criminals” will be arrested and deported. That is a lie. Plain and simple.

A case in point is the Guatemalan minor children he tried to deport in the middle of the night this weekend. Fortunately, a judge put a stop to that. Trump needs to understand that even an undocumented child from Guatemala has the right to due process in the United States of America.

What happened to “Give me your tired, your poor… your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” that the high school chorus used to sing?

What happened to “the land of the free and the home of the brave” from our national anthem? We have failed our national anthem this year… or, I suppose we failed it on election day last November. I don’t think I can sing it anymore.

What happened to the Republican Party?

What happened to common decency?

What happened to my country?

God, help us!

Janet

23 thoughts on “Let’s put a name on ICE detention: Allison Bustillo”

  1. Reminds me of the worst cliches from the Vietnam Conflict, In order to save the village ( could be read as the US) we had to destroy it. Or let’s shoot everyone and let God sort it out. Careless disregard for everything but themselves.

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  2. Allison’s story is absolutely appalling–and multiplied by the hundreds of others this has happened to. I’m beyond ashamed to be an American citizen. Somebody needs to stop this madness or people are going to die.

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  5. Until they come after the people in positions of power who could do something about this, nothing will happen. By then, the rest of us will already have disappeared. I don’t know how much more of this we can take, Liz, and I’m afraid to consider how bad it will likely get. A country of sheep willingly being led to the slaughter. A part of me envies the people who are blissfully unaware. I see ads on TV for furniture, etc. with “no interest until 2030” and I think how bizarre. Do they really think we’ll still have a country and a means to pay for something like furniture five years from now? I can no longer envision life a year from now, much less five years from now. It is as if there is a whole segment of society out there going merrily along, completely blind to what has happened since January 20 and completely blind to what surely lies ahead.

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  7. Very scary. He is breaking rules and norms faster than anyone can keep up. I hope the Republican Congress will take action now that he is going after the ways some of them get elected.

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  8. They are snatching firefighters in the middle of fighting wild fires out west because they are (or at least presumed to be) illegal aliens. Do we really want to remove people willing to do a dangerous job for a country that treats them like vermin?

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  9. Unlike President Bone Spur. we have aliens willing to serve and die for this country (as both military and first responders). He won’t even get his comb-over mussed to visit dead soldiers that he refers to as losers.

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  10. I’m losing hope… No, I have lost all hope. I don’t think all the Republicans in Congress put together can muster enough of a spine to get up against TACO. And I suppose in a few minutes he will announce the Dept. of War. What a message from the US to the world that projects!

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  13. I can’t afford to stay here and I really can’t afford to go elsewhere. Last time I visited Scotland, I should have just over-stayed my welcome. If I’d only known what our future held! Whew! TACO just announced Rocket City, Alabama. One more day we can have a Dept. of Defense.

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  14. What a sorry piece of _____ he is! That comb-over looked pretty bad a few minutes ago for the Space Force announcement. If he sees a picture of himself this afternoon, the entire Presidential Hair Force will be fired.

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