There have been numerous disturbing moments during New Zealander Everlee Wihongi’s ongoing detention in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but there is one that stands out, her mother says.
When detainees are transferred between facilities they are required to remove their assigned uniforms and put on the clothes they wore the day they were detained, Betty Wihongi, tells the Guardian from Wisconsin, her home of 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 says.
“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 US when she was six and holds a green card, was detained in Los Angeles on 10 April, after a family trip to New Zealand.
After an agonising 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 she had travelled in and out of the country several times without issue. She was not asked to declare her conviction on any of those trips, including her attempt to re-enter the US on 10 April, Betty says.
“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 in the Adelanto facility, Wihongi was housed in a room with 45 people for 22 hours a day, Betty says. The guards would regularly leave lights on during the night and talk and shout outside the room.
Betty claims Everlee saw guards telling a pregnant woman in the facility 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 supposed to have her first video meeting with her lawyer, she was abruptly woken just after midnight and told she was being transferred. Wihongi was not given a reason for her transfer and was unable to meet her lawyer, Betty says.
“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 says.
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 had vanished from the ICE tracking website.
“We kicked up a big stink,” Betty says. “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 centre in Arizona, where she is still being held. When she was transferred from California, her original immigration hearing date – 10 June – became redundant, as she is in a new jurisdiction. No new date has been set.
“She’s back to square one,” Betty says.
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 says.
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 says, 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 US has started offering assistance to the family and has met with Wihongi, Betty says, 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 says. “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.