Mother fights to free daughter from ICE detention

A New Zealander’s six-week detention in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has included numerous disturbing moments, her mother said.

When detainees are transferred between facilities, they must remove their assigned uniforms and put on the clothes they wore the day they were apprehended, Betty Wihongi told the Guardian from Wisconsin, where she has lived for nearly 30 years.

“Everlee says you can tell what people were doing when they were apprehended by ICE. There are nurses in scrubs, road workers, pregnant mothers with children – all shackled,” she said.

“They’re not gangsters, they are not people causing trouble, they are just normal people who want a good life.”

Everlee Wihongi, 37, who moved to the U.S. when she was six and holds a green card, was detained at Los Angeles International Airport on April 10 after a family trip to New Zealand.

After an agonizing seven-hour wait at the airport, Wihongi called her family, saying there had been an issue with a historic conviction and she was being sent to an ICE processing facility in Adelanto, California.

Wihongi had a conviction for possession of marijuana dating back more than a decade and had traveled in and out of the U.S. several times without issue. She was not asked to declare her conviction on any of those trips, including her attempted re-entry on April 10, Betty said.

“We felt sick, we were just terrified, because anytime ICE comes on TV here it is never good news.”

The family hoped Wihongi would soon be released. Instead, she is nearly six weeks into her detention.

During her time at the Adelanto facility, Wihongi was housed in a room with 45 people for 22 hours a day, Betty said. Guards would regularly leave lights on during the night and talk and shout outside the room.

Betty claimed Everlee saw guards telling a pregnant woman in the facility that her baby would be taken away and adopted out after birth, and watched guards yell at detainees who did not speak English.

Wihongi spent a month in Adelanto. On the day she was scheduled to have her first video meeting with her lawyer, she was abruptly awakened just after midnight and told she was being transferred. Wihongi was not given a reason and was unable to meet her lawyer, Betty said.

“We live in America, supposedly the land of the free, but you have no rights, none. If you are not a citizen here, you have zero standing,” she said.

Wihongi called her mother saying she was being transferred to either Texas or Arizona, and then she disappeared for three days. Betty had no idea where her daughter was, and her profile vanished from the ICE tracking website.

“We kicked up a big stink,” Betty said. “We were very stubborn, but if she didn’t have us, she would be toast. Anyone in that facility that does not have a family member outside doing leg-work for them, or don’t have money, are screwed.”

Three days later, Wihongi contacted her family from the Eloy detention center in Arizona, where she is still being held. When she was transferred from California, her original immigration hearing date of June 10 became redundant because she is now in a new jurisdiction. No new date has been set.

“She’s back to square one,” Betty said.

Some days, Wihongi calls her mother crying.

“I have to be the meanie and tell her to ‘snap out of it, that they want you to break, they want you to lose hope and they want you to cry. Don’t give in to them,'” Betty said.

Wihongi’s lawyer is now hoping to have her original conviction vacated in a court hearing on Thursday, arguing their earlier lawyer had failed in his duties.

Wihongi’s earlier lawyer neglected to tell Wihongi that by pleading guilty to her charge, she could face deportation or the removal of her green card, Betty said. “She would have plead not guilty,” Betty said, adding the lawyer has since been disbarred for lying to clients and forgery of documents.

“Our lawyer wants to have the charges vacated because he says that is what is making her inadmissible to the US.”

The New Zealand consulate in the U.S. has started offering assistance to the family and has met with Wihongi, Betty said, but she wants the New Zealand government to start asking questions.

“We’re not asking them to go in there and rip Everlee out, or to pay for anything,” she said. “We’re asking them to put a little bit of pressure on the government here and ask ‘what are you doing?’, ‘why is one of our nationals being treated like this?'”

The office for the minister of foreign affairs said the ministry was providing consular assistance to the family but that New Zealand was unable to influence the immigration decisions of other governments.

The Guardian has contacted ICE for comment.