‘Aunty Lynn is coming home.’ Pierce County woman detained by ICE to be released
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- An immigration judge canceled the deportation of Pierce County resident Lewelyn Dixon.
- Dixon spent 90 days in ICE detention due to a nonviolent criminal conviction from 2001.
- Supporters rallied outside the Northwest ICE Processing Center as Dixon was released.
A Tacoma-based immigration judge ruled Thursday that a Pierce County resident who had been detained by ICE after living in the United States as a permanent resident for 50 years should not be deported to the Philippines.
Relatives of 64-year-old Lewelyn Dixon cried and clapped after Judge Tammy Fitting made that ruling in a courtroom within the Northwest ICE Processing Center, where Dixon has been detained for months.
Dixon, wearing a yellow and white uniform, told reporters her time in the facility had been “hell,” before she went back into the bowels of the federal immigration lockup to be processed and released.
Outside, one of Dixon’s nieces, Melania Madriaga, said Thursday’s hearing was nerve wracking, and hearing the judge rule that Dixon could remain in the United States made her emotional.
“It’s painful, the fact that we have to go through this,” Madriaga said.
Madriaga traveled from her home in Hawaii to be at her aunt’s immigration hearing. She and about 15 other people were in attendance.
Outside the facility, more than a hundred people rallied to support them. Tanggol Migrante Network, an advocacy group for Filipino migrants and their families, estimated that 275 people were there. Some traveled from Oregon.
Madriaga said she’d asked organizers to play music by Bruno Mars when Dixon was released. She said her aunt bought concert tickets for this week’s show in Las Vegas, Nevada before she was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
After the hearing, a person told the crowd of people gathered in the street, “Aunty Lynn is coming home.” The news drew cheers and applause. Some people beat on drums or waved flags. Dixon was expected to be released by 5 p.m.
Dixon, a lab technician for the University of Washington, was detained at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after she returned to the United States on Feb. 28 from a trip to the Philippines. Her attorney, Benjamin Osorio, has said she was detained due to a nonviolent criminal conviction from 2001.
Dixon immigrated to Hawaii from the Philippines at age 14 in 1974 and moved to Washington in the 1990s, according to family members. She’s been employed with UW Medicine since 2015.
Thursday’s hearing centered on whether Fitting should grant Dixon an application for cancellation of removal. Before granting it, Fitting said she placed a good amount of weight on the fact that Dixon had come to the United States as a child, and she had been a lawful permanent resident for more than 50 years.
Dixon testified during the proceeding about her criminal history, why she traveled to the Philippines earlier this year, her ties to that country and what the effects of being deported there would be on her and her family.
If she was deported, Dixon said, she wouldn’t know where to go. She said she had distant relatives in the Philippines, but they lived in a two-bedroom apartment occupied by 10 people, and she didn’t think they could accommodate her. Dixon said her whole family was in the United States.
“If you take me away from them, it’s going to be devastating for me and for them,” Dixon said in court.
“This is the only place I know,” Dixon said.
Asked why she had never become a U.S. citizen, Dixon explained that she had promised her father she would keep her citizenship in the Philippines because he owned land there, and one day she and other relatives would inherit it. She said the property was farmland, and it wasn’t feasible to build housing for herself there.
Madriaga previously told The News Tribune that Dixon traveled to the Philippines earlier this year to check on the property.
The criminal conviction that triggered Dixon’s ICE detention was an embezzlement charge she pleaded guilty to in 2000 in U.S. District Court. She was a vault teller at White Center Financial Center when she took $6,460 from the vault over several months.
Dixon was sentenced in 2001 to 30 days in a halfway house and 150 days of home confinement. She later paid back the money she’d taken as restitution. Asked about the incident Thursday, Dixon said temptation made her do it, and since then she’d avoided work related to money.
She was also charged with third-degree theft in 2011 for shoplifting, but the case was dismissed. Dixon said she forgot to pay for $27 of items at Walmart she’d left under her purse in a shopping cart. She said she tried to return to pay for them but was issued a citation and had to go to court.
After Dixon finished answering questions from her attorney and a lawyer for the U.S. government, Fitting made her ruling.
Dixon walked out of the detention center at about 4:15 p.m., 90 days after she was first detained. She was mobbed by a cheering crowd and hugged by family members. Someone played the song, “Uptown Funk.”
This story was originally published May 29, 2025 at 3:57 PM.
