A New Zealand woman detained by immigration authorities in the US is set to be released in the coming days, her lawyer says.
Everlee Wihongi, 37, who has lived in the US since she was a child, was stopped by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials at Los Angeles International Airport in April after a trip to New Zealand.
The green card holder was detained over a cannabis possession charge from 2014, and has been in ICE custody for over two months – being moved between detention facilities in California, Texas, and Arizona.
Her lawyer Marc Christopher told Breakfast this morning he had received a filing from the federal government indicating it would drop her case, vacating her conviction.
“She should be released, hopefully within the next two days if everything goes well,” he said.
“The filing has been submitted to the immigration court. We are simply waiting for the judge’s signature, and she will be released.”
He said Wihongi’s family had already spoken to her, and she was “over the moon”.
Christopher said that when she is released, ICE would “basically open the doors” at the Arizona facility, leaving her to arrange her own transportation back to her home in Wisconsin. Christopher said he and Wihongi’s family would be working to help with this process.
Christopher said the process of being moved across the country had been “very stressful” for her family.
“Not to mention what she has to go through in the facilities that she’s located in.”
He said the recent development felt like vindication for the case.
“In one sense, we’re very happy she’s being released. We’re very happy we were able to vacate her conviction.”
He said he was “frustrated that it has to take this long”.
“She sat there in immigration custody, in this terrible facility for the last 70 days.”
He said the amount of time it took for her to be released was “indicative of what’s happening in the United States right now”.
Since US President Donald Trump was re-elected, there has been a huge increase in immigration enforcement in the country. Crackdowns in California and Minnesota, where agents patrolled the streets and interrogated residents, sparked huge protests and local resistance to impede their efforts.
Christopher said that while authorities were detaining record numbers of people, “they don’t have the mechanism in place to run them through the system”.
“They don’t have the place to put the people.
“People get lost in the mix.”
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