Bummer: ICE Detains Wisconsin Woman In Los Angeles

So, let’s say you are applying for citizenship, going through all the steps, paying all that money, and then you break the law. Do you know what happens? Well, you lose your citizenship journey. You go back to your home country. But, if it’s illegal aliens and people who overstayed their visas?

ICE Detains Wisconsin Green Card Holder With 2014 Cannabis Conviction

Los Angeles International Airport customs officers took Everlee Wihongi aside for questioning in April. Her family hasn’t seen her since.

Wihongi, a longtime resident of Hortonville, Wisconsin, was passing through Los Angeles during a return trip from her native New Zealand. The 37-year-old green card holder had made the same trip at least a half-dozen times, even after pleading no contest to a felony marijuana possession charge in Fond du Lac County in her mid-20s.

She’s been here on a green card since she was a child

Wihongi has held a green card since childhood, when her father’s career as a locomotive engineer brought the family to northeast Wisconsin. “As the years went by, it was just cheaper to renew (her) green card,” her mother, Betty Wihongi, recalled.

Her 2014 conviction was not grounds for deportation, said Marc Christopher, a Milwaukee immigration attorney representing Wihongi. “She can remain here and become a U.S. citizen,” he said, “but once she crosses the border, she’s governed by the rules of admissibility.”

Why not? If she possessed any drug (over 30 grams of marijuana) then that is 100% a reason to cancel a green card and deport that person. It says so in US code. She seems to like New Zealand a lot. But, of course, there’s more than what Christopher said

But with the White House’s nationwide immigration enforcement crackdown in full swing, customs officers took a new approach to the felony on her record. After a few uneasy hours in a secluded screening room, Wihongi left the airport in shackles en route to an immigration detention center in a desert valley northeast of Los Angeles.

Wihongi is one of hundreds of legal permanent residents federal immigration authorities have detained since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, often while they passed through airports and other ports of entry. Most — like Wihongi — had prior criminal convictions.

Those convictions generally make immigrants “inadmissible,” meaning they cannot freely re-enter the U.S.Customs officers have “a lot of discretion at the port of entry” when deciding whether to allow green card holders with convictions like Wihongi’s to re-enter the country, Madison-based immigration attorney Aissa Olivarez said. “They have given none lately.”

Foreign felons, including if they committed the crimes in the U.S., are usually not admissible to the United States. And, of course, the news has to make it about all of them.

“Possessing a green card is a privilege, not a right,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “Our government has the authority to revoke a green card if our laws are broken and abused,” the spokesperson added, and to detain legal permanent residents while they await a decision in their removal case.

Perhaps Wihongi should have not committed a felony. And, since she did, perhaps she should have considered what federal law says.