{"id":18211,"date":"2026-08-12T13:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T01:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18211"},"modified":"2026-08-12T13:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T01:19:09","slug":"no-name-just-a-bunk-bed-number-kiwi-on-conditions-inside-ice-detention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=18211","title":{"rendered":"No name, just a bunk-bed number: Kiwi on conditions inside ICE detention"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What gives you hope when you’re being held in a US immigration detention facility?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For New Zealand citizen Everlee Wihongi, it was the support of her family and loved ones, but she says hope can be a bad thing in a place like that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Lots of times it was bad to have hope that things would go well,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It was like I can’t look too far into the future because I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wihongi, who has lived in the US for decades and holds a green card, was detained by ICE in early April after coming back from New Zealand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She was held for more than 70 days because of a 2016 cannabis conviction that was later thrown out by the courts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Now, she’s back home in Wisconsin with her family.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Speaking to RNZ, Wihongi said her time in detainment was one of the most miserable experiences of her entire existence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Officials at the facility would refer to her as a bunk-bed number, rather than by her name, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She wasn’t Everlee Wihongi, she was ‘Six Up’.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It was dehumanising conditions,” Wihongi said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Whenever you’d have an appointment or you had to go see a lawyer, anything, they would just go ‘Six Up, you have an appointment’.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wihongi said meal times at the facilities she was held in were another challenge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“The first spot I was in, we had to get up at 6am to eat, and if you didn’t get up for breakfast and you didn’t eat,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“When I was in Arizona, you had to get up at 3.45am to get breakfast, and if you didn’t go, then you just didn’t eat till lunchtime, which is around 1pm.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wihongi was first held in an ICE facility in California, before being moved to Arizona and spending a night on the floor in a Texan holding facility along the way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In transit, Wihongi described seeing other detainees being removed from a plane before they could board.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She and others had been woken at 1.30 that morning, shackled, and moved out, but weren’t on the plane until later that evening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We could see the people coming off the plane, but they couldn’t see into the van,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“There were children in shackles, a pregnant lady, old people, everybody just being marched around like herded animals really, getting off the plane, getting into these other buses.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The conviction that saw\u00a0Wihongi detained by ICE<\/a>\u00a0in the first place was thrown out by a court in June.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She described the moment as unbelievable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I didn’t want to be too excited or get too ahead of myself,” she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I thought for sure it’d be a few more months they would try and hold me in there, I didn’t think that they were going to let me out right away.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wihongi said having hope in detention meant you’d be devastated at one point or another.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Everlee<\/div>
Everlee Wihongi and whanau<\/p>\n

Supplied \/ Courtney Wihongi<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade had been providing consular assistance during Wihongi’s detainment. She said staff from the New Zealand’s Los Angeles consulate were helpful, evening bringing her New Zealand chocolate on one visit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Staff helped her recover documents like her passport, Green Card, and drivers license – something she didn’t have when she was released.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Foreign Affairs Minister\u00a0Winston Peters<\/a>\u00a0had said Wihongi was detained for not declaring her historic cannabis possession conviction, but that was completely false, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“In all my time coming back and forth, I’ve never been given one of those forms.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“Even when the consulate asked, ‘did you get one of those papers to mark your conviction?’ I was never given one of those,” Wihongi said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She was shocked by the public response to her time in ICE custody.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“It was something else to come out of something like that to so much love and support from not only my family, but strangers and people I didn’t know.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She hoped those still detained by ICE had the same love and support she experienced.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“There are just more people in there that have nothing, they don’t have the family support like I did, they don’t have their country supporting them like I did, I just wish more people could experience that,” Wihongi said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“I’m so grateful for all the love and everything that, you know, reading people’s messages and seeing their comments on everything has just been just so beautiful and just that’s such a good thing to come out of something like that ordeal.”<\/p>\n

Source: RNZ<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What gives you hope when you’re being held in a US immigration detention facility? For New Zealand citizen Everlee Wihongi, it was the support of her family and loved ones, but she says hope can be a bad thing in a place like that. “Lots of times it was bad to have hope that things […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":18212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18213,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18211\/revisions\/18213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}