\u201cThey [ICE] never contacted our lawyer, so he was waiting for her on a Zoom call and she never showed up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The online ICE detainee locator system said that Everlee was in \u201cCamp East Montana\u201d, Texas, a camp where an average of about 3000 people per day live.<\/p>\n
Detainees had described the camp to CNN as loud and unsanitary, where diseases spread easily and sleep was a luxury.<\/p>\n
But then, as journalist David Farrier reported, Everlee disappeared from the detainee locator system.<\/p>\n
On Monday night, Betty received information that her daughter was being held at an airport in Arizona.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe doesn\u2019t know how long she\u2019ll be there, they told her not to get comfortable that she will be moved, but they don\u2019t know where it going to be,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The wh\u0101nau pictured in New Zealand. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Betty said that because Everlee had moved to another jurisdiction, she would have to restart the process to have her case heard in court.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo every time you are moved, your court appearances, everything that you had before disappears and you start at the bottom again.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
She said it was taking a toll on Everlee, who was usually a happy and outgoing person.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust the moving around, the facilities, the guards, just everyone, it\u2019s just their job to make your life miserable and hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think her greatest fear is that we don\u2019t know where she is, that we won\u2019t be able to locate her or find her and she\u2019s going to be lost in all this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family were once again calling on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFAT) and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters to do more to help.<\/p>\n
\u201cReaching out to the US government [asking] what\u2019s going on with the detainee? Why are you moving her around so much, why can\u2019t she have her day in court?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want them to provide funding for us, that\u2019s something we\u2019re taking care of. We don\u2019t want them to give us a free ride for anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
When contacted by RNZ, MFAT repeated its statement that the Government was \u201cunable to influence the immigration decisions of other governments\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said MFAT was unable to comment on the details of any individual case and Peters\u2019 office referred RNZ to the ministry for comment.<\/p>\n
As of this month, MFAT said it was aware of two New Zealand citizens in immigration detention in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey [ICE] never contacted our lawyer, so he was waiting for her on a Zoom call and she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9526,682,15308,216972,172435,207102,2027,32033,111,43,139,69,13672,61,207103],"class_list":["post-422805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-another","tag-being","tag-charlie","tag-detainee","tag-dreaver","tag-everlee","tag-ice","tag-moved","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-state","tag-to","tag-wihongi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}