ICE Deports Nurse in US 20 Years Despite Family Plan to Relocate to Canada - Newsweek
A nurse and mother of two who lived in the United States for two decades has been deported to Kenya after overstaying her student visa, federal immigration officials said.
Maureen Wanjiru Ngure, who entered the U.S. legally through New York in November 2006, was deported to her native East African nation on September 22, more than a month after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested the California woman during an appointment at the agency's office in San Francisco.
"She chose to illegally overstay her welcome in violation of our nation's laws," a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told Newsweek late Monday in a statement. "Claims that Ngure was unjustly detained are FALSE."
A website previously launched to free Ngure from a federal immigration detention center in Louisiana, where she had been held roughly 2,000 miles from her husband and two children, characterized the longtime nurse as "wrongfully detained" while seeking donations for legal and travel costs.
"She is a community volunteer on the Contra Costa County Covid Team and, according to her family, never missed a DHS appointment in twenty years in the United States," the website reads. "She had also been selected for a Canadian nursing employment pathway program."
But instead of finalizing a move to Canada, where Ngure had reportedly been offered a healthcare job in British Columbia, she spent several weeks following her arrest in detention centers in California, Arizona, Louisiana and New Jersey, where relatives said she slept on floors and lost her phone and identification while in transit. She had even been transferred to an airport to be deported to an unknown country before she was returned to custody thanks to a last-minute deportation halt, supporters said.
A separate GoFundMe page, meanwhile, had garnered more than $26,000 in donations as of Tuesday while citing Ngure's lack of a criminal record and the impact of her prolonged detention on her children.
DHS officials said an immigration judge previously issued Ngure a final order of removal in February 2012. A month later, she was arrested in Seattle before being released from ICE custody in September 2012 pending immigration proceedings, according to federal immigration officials.
"To be clear: a pending application does NOT confer legal status in the United States," a DHS spokesman told Newsweek. "Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App. The United States is offering illegal aliens $3,000 and a free flight to self-deport now. We encourage every person here illegally to take advantage of this offer and reserve the chance to come back to the U.S. the right legal way to live the American dream. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return."
Ngure's attorney, Regine Dupuy, confirmed that her husband, Peter Mang’ara Muchendu, and the couple's two young children flew from San Francisco International Airport to Kenya on Friday.
"They’re very family-oriented people and his primary concern was making his children feel secure and safe and returning to join her was the best way," Dupuy told Newsweek early Tuesday. "This was very important to them to be together."
Dupuy said Ngure and Muchendu are now considering their next steps, including possible relocation to Canada.
"They're taking it one step at a time and looking at what is in their best interest," she said. "They have to look at all of the options available and make their decisions based on that."
Muchendu told the San Francisco Chronicle that he and Ngure started planning to leave the United States in January amid President Donald Trump's ongoing deportation campaign and ultimately decided on Canada prior to her arrest.
"We were like a hairline to our next move," Muchendu told the newspaper in a story published Monday. "And then this happened. We have to get her out."
Newsweek reached out to Muchendu for comment.
Muchendu and Dupuy visited Ngure at a detention center in Louisiana on August 24 and unsuccessfully tried to get her released from custody. She was then transferred to a facility in New Jersey prior to her deportation last week.
"She was literally taken from us," Taelor Seaton, a registered nurse who worked alongside Ngure at Contra Costa County Regional Medical Center in Martinez, California, told the Chronicle.
Advocates in Concord, California, held a rally in support of Ngure on September 19, just three days prior to her deportation. Muchendu said he had spoken to his wife 24 hours earlier and relayed the conditions she described, KGO-TV reported.
"There's no privacy, the food is really bad," he told the station. "You take a shower, everybody sees you. You use the bathroom, everybody sees you. We are hoping the government will show compassion and just let her out. The situation where she's at sounds just cruel on top of everything, being stripped away from your family."
Muchendu told his young children about their mother's plight just before the rally in Concord, the Chronicle reported.
"Just shock," he told the newspaper.
But after reassuring them they'd soon be reunited with their mother in Kenya, where she's staying with loved ones, Muchendu said the couple's children breathed easy again.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Dave Siminoff.
