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.
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 did not know where her daughter would 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 Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters 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."
When contacted by RNZ, MFAT repeated its statement that the government was "unable to influence the immigration decisions of other governments".
"The Ministry continues to provide consular assistance to the family of a New Zealander detained in Los Angeles. Consular officials are in regular contact with the individual and their family," a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson said MFAT was unable to comment on the details of any individual case and Peters' office referred RNZ to the ministry for comment.
As of this month, MFAT said it was aware of two New Zealand citizens in immigration detention in the United States.
