(KTLA) — A 64-year-old woman, a legal permanent resident of the United States for the last 50 years, was held in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for three months, according to multiple media reports.
Lewelyn Dixon, a lab technician at the University of Washington, was arrested at Seattle-Tacoma Airport and taken to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, according to reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting.
A Filipino green-card holder, Dixon has been in the U.S. since she was 14 and was detained after returning from a trip to the Philippines in late February.
“It was horrific; it was awful, it is crowded,” she told loved ones, friends and supporters who greeted her outside the detention facility after a judge ruled she was not eligible for deportation, NBC News reported.
Since Trump has taken office, several green-card holders, including a Danish national father of four with no criminal record who has legally been in the country for more than 10 years, have been swept up in the administration’s immigration crackdown.
In Dixon’s case, what caught the attention of U.S. Customs and Border Protection was likely a 25-year-old embezzlement conviction, attorney Benjamin Osorio told the outlet.
In 2000, Dixon pleaded guilty to stealing $6,460 from Washington Mutual Bank, where she worked as a vault teller and operations supervisor. She was ordered to spend 30 days in a halfway house and pay restitution, both of which she has completed.
Lani Madriaga, Dixon’s niece, told NBC News that the entire ordeal has been traumatizing and emotional, especially since Dixon never told her family about the conviction.
“We don’t think of her any differently after we found out about her conviction,” she told the outlet. “She turned it all around and she really worked hard and really focused on health care, where it’s really about helping the community.”
Long eligible for citizenship, Dixon never pursued it because she promised her father she’d maintain her Filipino nationality so that she could keep property in the country.
According to her niece, Dixon’s first priorities now that she’s out of the detention facility are to get her citizenship and return to work.
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