NZ citizen Everlee Wihongi on 73 days in ICE custody over a conviction later quashed
New Zealand citizen Everlee Wihongi has described dehumanising conditions during more than 70 days in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, after being detained on the basis of a cannabis conviction that was later thrown out by the courts.
Wihongi, 37, moved to the United States when she was six years old and holds a US green card, which grants lawful permanent residency. She was detained by ICE in Los Angeles on 10 April after returning from a family trip to New Zealand, according to The Guardian. She was released on 19 June after 73 days in custody, per WSWS.
The detention stemmed from a 2016 cannabis conviction that was quashed — formally overturned — by the courts in June. Wihongi told RNZ that the experience was defined by conditions she described as dehumanising. At her first facility in California, detainees were required to rise at 6am for breakfast. After she was moved to Arizona, the wake-up shifted to 3.45am, with no food provided until lunchtime around 1pm for anyone who missed the morning meal.
Wihongi was first held in California before being transferred to Arizona. During transit she spent a night on the floor of a Texas holding facility. She said she witnessed other detainees being removed from a plane, including children in shackles, a pregnant woman, and elderly people being marched in a manner she likened to herded animals.
ICE facility officials referred to Wihongi by her bunk-bed number, "Six Up," rather than her name.
Wihongi directly contradicted Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters' claim that she was detained for failing to declare her historic cannabis conviction. She said she was never given declaration forms to complete.
New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) provided consular assistance during the detention. Consular assistance is the practical help a government offers its citizens abroad — in this case, visits, advocacy, and document recovery. Staff from the Los Angeles consulate brought Wihongi New Zealand chocolate and helped recover her passport, green card, and driver's licence.
Wihongi's sister-in-law described the quashing of the 2016 conviction as a huge relief, RNZ reported.
The broader context here is that the case touches on several pressure points in the bilateral relationship between New Zealand and the United States. Peters' public attribution of the detention to a failure to declare the conviction, directly contested by Wihongi's account, raises questions about the basis on which the Minister framed the matter publicly. For practitioners in the foreign affairs and consular space, MFAT's involvement, while ultimately effective in recovering Wihongi's documents, operated against a backdrop of prolonged detention of a citizen whose underlying conviction was already subject to judicial reconsideration.
The gap between detention in April and the conviction's quashing in June, followed by release on 19 June, also invites scrutiny of how ICE processes interact with state-level court outcomes, and what consular channels can realistically expedite when the detaining authority's threshold for holding a lawful permanent resident rests on a conviction under active legal challenge. Wihongi's account of conditions in transit and in custody, including the use of a bunk number in place of her name, adds to the body of reporting on ICE facility standards that has drawn congressional and civil-society attention in the US.
For New Zealand, the case lays bare the practical limits of consular assistance when a dual-status citizen — a green-card holder with decades of US residency — is caught in federal immigration enforcement. MFAT can visit, advocate, and recover documents, but the detention authority and the judicial timeline sit outside its reach.
