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The sister-in-law of a New Zealander held in ICE custody alleges she was shackled and not fed while being transferred to a different state.
Everlee Wihongi was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when re-entering the US on a Green Card a month ago, following a family holiday in New Zealand.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said this afternoon that he had been “thoroughly briefed” on the issue, and “we’re working to the max to help her”.
In a diary of events that Courtney Wihongi has been keeping since Everlee was detained, she noted down the gruelling transfer process her sister-in-law has been through over the weekend.
“Finally, at 7:30 pm 05/10/2026 Everlee was able to call and she had a rough couple of days,” she wrote, adding that Everlee’s two-day travel included being “shackled for hours, waiting in hot weather, not given food, sleeping on the ground, not being able to shower”.
Courtney told RNZ the family has also been extremely worried for Everlee’s wellbeing, and how she will adjust to the new facility in Arizona.
“I would say none of these facilities here in the US are nice by any means.
“You know for her to be in the one in California, it took some time for her to adjust and get some sort of a routine so that she could have some peace of mind, and have some sort of normalcy, with her life that’s been completely uprooted.
“So to restart that completely again, and especially having the weekend that she had, of travelling, being kept awake while she’s travelling, I can’t even imagine what she’s going through,” she said.
Everlee’s mother Betty Wihongi earlier told RNZ she does not know where her daughter will end up, after she was taken to a different state.
Betty was in Wisconsin and said Everlee was told she was being removed from a centre in California on Friday at midnight local time.
On Saturday morning, she had missed a scheduled meeting with her lawyer.
“They [ICE] never contacted our lawyer, so he was waiting for her on a Zoom call and she never showed up,” she said.
The online ICE detainee locator system said that Everlee was in “Camp East Montana” Texas, a camp where an average of about 3000 people per day live.
Detainees had described the camp to CNN as loud and unsanitary, where diseases spread easily and sleep was a luxury.
But then, as journalist David Farrier reported, Everlee disappeared from the detainee locator system.
‘Start at the bottom again’
On Monday night, Betty received information that her daughter was being held at an airport in Arizona.
“She doesn’t know how long she’ll be there, they told her not to get comfortable that she will be moved, but they don’t know where it’s going to be,” she said.
Betty said because Everlee had moved to another jurisdiction, she would have to restart the process to have her case heard in court.
“So every time you are moved, your court appearances, everything that you had before disappears and you start at the bottom again,” she said.
Betty said their lawyer had been seeing more and more cases of ICE moving detainees to make it difficult for lawyers to get hold of them and to set court appearances.
She said her daughter had been doing well considering, but it was taking a toll on Everlee, who was usually a happy and outgoing person.
“Just the moving around, the facilities, the guards, just everyone, it’s just their job to make your life miserable and hard.
“I think her greatest fear is that we don’t know where she is, that we won’t be able to locate her or find her and she’s going to be lost in all this,” she said.
MFAT ‘unable to influence’ US immigration decisions
The family were once again calling on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) and the Foreign Affairs Minister to do more to help.
“Reaching out to the US government [asking] what’s going on with the detainee? Why are you moving her around so much, why can’t she have her day in court?
“We don’t want them to provide funding for us, that’s something we’re taking care of. We don’t want them to give us a free ride for anything else.”
Peters ‘putting this falsehood out into a public forum’ - family
In a letter sent directly to Peters, Wihongi’s aunt Jenny Hewett-Sauauga accused the minister of publicly misrepresenting the circumstances surrounding her niece’s detention.
“I was highly disappointed to hear you say that Everlee had not declared her previous records, and that is why she was detained,” Hewett-Sauauga wrote.
“As the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I would have expected you to have looked into this matter with due diligence before putting this falsehood out into a public forum.”
Asked about Hewett-Sauauga’s accusation he publicly misrepresented the circumstances of the detention, Peters said: “It’s all out there.”
“I don’t know what she meant by that,” he said about the accusation. “I’ve never seen the letter.”
Hewett-Sauauga said immigration lawyers in the United States had advised the family that Peters’ comments were incorrect because Wihongi is a lawful permanent resident and green card holder.
“There is no form for her to fill out upon her arrival, and she did not need to ‘declare’ anything,” she wrote.
In response, Peters said Wihongi’s lawyer and the consul will “know all that”.
“We’ll have all the facts out there, but what I can say to you is we’re working to the max to help her.”
Asked what information he based his public comments that Wihongi failed to declare her record, Peters said “on 45 years being a lawyer”.
Asked how Wihongi could fill out a form she was not given, Peters said: “You’re putting out a hypothesis now, no facts whatsoever.
“I’m not responding to that. I’m going to respond to the fact that everything we can do, from our departmental, consular point of view, we are doing.”
Despite an earlier statement from MFAT saying Wihongi was in Los Angeles, Peters said he knew she was in Arizona.
“I know where she is. I know where her lawyer is.”
Peters said the government had always been concerned for people’s wellbeing. “We’ve got people out of prison and all sorts of things over the years.”
“I’m not going to have my department put down for going to the max to do their job properly.”
He said the consul in Los Angeles had contacted Wihongi five times, her mother nine times, and other members of the family countless times.
Nā Lucy Xia rawa ko Charlie Dreaver nō RNZ
