Top Awe and her brother Benga Awe, Pharmacy school students had to undergo traumatic experience during their interview at the Department of Homeland Security office in Milwaukee.
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Breaking in tears, Awe described her ordeal after being discharged after two days of detention at Dodge County Jail, where she and her brother were detained on an immigration hold. Awe was back at school, trying to catch up on her missed classes.
They had come to the United States as children with their family in 1989. They say it was not clear to them that a failed attempt in 2003 to secure political asylum by their father, Samuel Awe, a UW Ph.D. who was once the Nigerian secretary of agriculture, meant that they had to leave the country where they had grown up.
As their arrest set off a wave of protest from fellow students, heavy outpouring of support forced authorities for their early release. As Awe said, "The outpouring of love and support my brother and I received, I can't say enough about it."
Recalling her nightmare that while she was dressed in a business suit waiting for the ICE interview, she was suddenly taken into custody and her ankles and wrists shackled. She pleaded that there was no need for this as they had come in voluntarily the first time they were asked.
She and her brother were taken by van to the Dodge County Jail, with contracts with ICE to hold immigration detainees. After booking and the humiliating experience of a strip search, Tope said, she kept to herself in her cell the first day, acclimating herself to such indignities as a toilet right next to the bed.
"But being in that small room 24 hours a day was not the best thing for me," Awe said. The next day, she ventured out into the common area for the 16-cell pod where she was placed. She spent the days watching television, eating and reading with the other women, who included some on immigration holds and others on criminal charges.
ICE justified their detention saying that the Awe family has had multiple opportunities to have their case heard in immigration court and their cases and all subsequent appeals have been repeatedly denied. Their stay order had also expired.