Our lost immigrant child will spend the holiday with her father in a dangerous land she never really knew. Yet, the impact of her angelic sprit lives in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, among friends who love her in the town she called home for most of her life.

Now living in Honduras with her father Concepción, who goes by Carlos, 11-year-old Allison struggles to fend off homesickness after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents teamed up with Dunmore police to seize her at her elementary school on October 29.

An ICE spokesman in Philadelphia ignored my request for information to track the U.S. government deportation itinerary for her and her father. Dunmore Police Chief Sal Marchese said he didn’t want to talk about his officers wasting local resources by doing ICE work and ended our phone call. Mayor Max Conway and Councilman William Trip O’Malley dismissed my repeated requests for help stressing Allison’s plight. Dunmore resident and State Sen. Marty Flynn also ignored my written questions about the ICE raid that trapped Allison and her father.

While these privileged Dunmore fathers and descendants of immigrants prepare to celebrate the comforts of a lavish small-town Christmas with their families, a little girl who lived in a rented Dunmore house for most of her life aches for a “room” in a concrete block structure in one of the most violent parts of a corrupt, crime-ridden Latin American nation.

Carlos sent a Dunmore friend a photo of the small living space he’s building out of cinderblocks. The friend said she communicates with Carlos almost daily via text message.

“I want him to know he is not forgotten,” she said.

She has also spoken with Allison.

“She was crying,” the friend said.

“They are staying with relatives until their place is ready. For now she has some young cousins who have befriended her,” the friend said. “Allison is still trying to adjust to life in Honduras but has no choice but to adapt. She begins school in February. She cannot read in Spanish because she started school here in kindergarten and reads English only. Dad wants to make sure she learns but remains fluent in English.”

Teachers at Allison’s old school are pooling money to send for Christmas, said the friend who first met Allison while walking her dog.

“She started coming over to the house to pet my dog,” she said.

As Halloween approached Allison grew excited, the friend said. She told Allison she could pick out a costume online and wear it to trick or treat at her house. Allison chose to dress like Little Red Riding Hood. Perhaps it’s melodramatic to say, but this blameless child had no idea how ferocious the big bad wolf at the door would be. Little did Allison know that civic “leaders” like Conway, O’Malley, Marchese and Flynn, men who wield the power to pressure the government, would abandon her.  Allison never showed up on Halloween to pick up her costume the friend later donated to the Dunmore student theater.

The grim Dunmore ICE operation was no fairy tale.

Nor is the hellhole where U.S. government officials banished Allison and her father.

News reports about the area where Allison and her father live paint a grisly picture, particularly for women and girls who face MS-13 and 18th Street gang members who control the region, drug trafficking shoot-outs, countless guns and massive political corruption.

According to a 2019 New York Times story, a woman from the town where Allison now lives was “gang-raped not once but twice in her 38 years. When she was 13, someone drugged her drink at a wedding and she was discovered a dozen hours later in a garbage dump, naked, unconscious, bound at the feet and hands, teeth marks and bruises all over her body. She became pregnant with her now 23-year-old daughter. She says the police never investigated anyone at the wedding to determine who kidnapped her.” Another girl who was gang-raped and murdered was 14. Another young woman was skinned before she was killed.

According to the Women’s Refugee Commission, in 2023 Honduras had one of the highest femicide (killing women for being women) rates in the world—7.2 per 100,000 women. Rape is reported nearly every hour. For countless women and girls fleeing Honduras is not about seeking a better life. It is the only way to stay alive.

While campaigning in 2023 President Donald Trump promised to deport only dangerous criminals, including rapists and murderers. Instead the overwhelming majority of deportees have no criminal record. And Trump recently pardoned the former Honduran president who was serving a 45-year federal prison sentence on cocaine trafficking charges. He is now free.

Neither Carlos nor Allison committed a crime in the United States. Living here as undocumented immigrants is a civil violation of law, not a criminal offense. This hard-working father who once diligently pursued the American Dream and his innocent daughter are now prisoners in a deadly country she only knew for the first few years of her life.

A life sentence in Honduras is often a very short stay.

Dunmore felt much more like home, especially at Christmas.