detained by ICE<\/a> while attempting to return to the US on a Green Card – or Permanent Resident Card – after a three-week holiday in New Zealand in early April, because of a 2016 cannabis conviction.<\/p>\nWihongi’s lawyer Marc Christopher said she will be released within the next two days if everything goes well.<\/p>\n
“Yesterday we just received notice that the government is in agreement that the conviction no longer stands and we have filed a joint motion to dismiss her case,” he said.<\/p>\n
“That means Everlee should be released within the next day or two. We’re just simply waiting for the judge to review and sign off on the order and once that judge does it she’s going to be released.”<\/p>\n
There are no further hearings set for the case.<\/p>\n
“The government and ourselves are in agreement that it should be dismissed so it’s just a matter of waiting for the judge to sign the order.”<\/p>\n
Christopher has been in touch with Wihongi’s family and they say she’s extremely excited and anxious to get out.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think unless you go through that or have a family member go through that, that you understand the pain, the anger and the angst that the person goes through and all their loved ones go through.”<\/p>\n
Wihongi had been living in Wisconsin, legally, where she had been training to be a welder.<\/p>\n
She returned to New Zealand for three weeks to celebrate a family milestone – an uncle’s 80th birthday – flying back to the States on April 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lawyer for a New Zealand woman detained by immigration authorities says she could be released in two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-484902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484902","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=484902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}