NYC student freed from Dubai after facing prison is back home and feels ‘like a dream’

New York City college student Elizabeth Polanco De Los Santos was back in the Big Apple Wednesday after being spared a year in a Dubai prison for touching an airport security guard — calling her homecoming “like a dream.”

The 21-year-old Lehman College student arrived on an early morning flight from the United Arab Emirates, bringing to a close “months of anguish,” according to the advocacy group Detained in Dubai, which helped secure her release.

Detained in Dubai CEO Radha Stirling told The Post in an email that when she asked Los Santos how it felt to be back home, the Bronx student was quoted as saying: “Like a dream right now. Thank you, what would I do without you.”

Los Santos now plans to “recuperate” from her harrowing ordeal and spend time with her mother, Stirling revealed.

“She is so grateful to be home!” the UK-based human rights advocate added.

Los Santos was allowed to leave Dubai after her sentence was commuted for an incident that occurred in July at Dubai International Airport, in which she was accused of “assaulting and insulting” a female staffer by touching her on the arm during a search.

In a text message exchange with Stirling, which was shared on Detained in Dubai’s website Tuesday, Los Santos said that she was fingerprinted before being told to meet police officers at the airport, where she would be handed her passport and put on a flight to New York City after midnight.

“I’m so happy,” she texted Stirling. “I really need this all of my chest I [will] feel most relief getting on that plane.”

The head of Detained in Dubai wrote in a statement that Los Santos’ “hellish” months in Dubai “left her humiliated, traumatized and out of pocket US$50,000.”

Los Santos’s nightmare began when she and a friend set out on a summer trip to Istanbul after the death of her father and surgery on her back.

On their way back home, the two pals made the fateful decision to have a 10-hour layover in Dubai rather than in Paris.

“We thought it would be a more modern and futuristic city but we were completely wrong,” Los Santos told the advocacy group.

While going through airport security, Los Santos said she was ordered to remove a medical compression suit she was prescribed to wear post-surgery.

She was led to a private screening room at the airport, where two female security guards roughly removed her suit, hurting her healing wounds in the process, she claimed.

“I was feeling uncomfortable and afraid. I felt really violated,” the business arts student said.

Los Santos then asked the airport workers to help her put the suit back on, but she said they only laughed at her, she said. She then tried to call her friend to come and assist her — and in doing so she made contact with one of the guards.

“I gently touched her arm to guide her out of the way then desperately started crying to my friend for help,” Los Santos was quoted as saying.

Los Santos was detained for hours while the female staffer wrote a complaint against her.

After spending months bouncing between different hotels as her case wound its way through the courts, Los Santos in August was ordered by a judge to pay a $2,700 fine and leave Dubai.

But the customs officers appealed the verdict, allegedly telling the college student that they wanted to see her locked up.

“The vindictiveness of accusers is largely driven by the likelihood that they will be offered compensation to drop the case,” Stirling wrote.

The human right activist and lawyer welcomed Los Santos’ release, but argued that the outcome of her case was far from a “happy ending.”

“She has been left with the scars of an incomprehensibly traumatic experience for a young student, she has lost US$50,000 that she will never be compensated for,” Stirling wrote. “Furthermore, she’s been convicted on the basis of mere allegations, sentenced to a year’s prison, fined and deported. That in itself is a disgrace.”