A Tongan teenager says she wishes she’d been taken instead after Immigration NZ moved to deport her two youngest siblings and the aunt raising them, a move now on hold.
“When I heard my youngest siblings were going I was like, they should have taken me instead of them because they don’t know anything, they don’t understand,” she said through tears.
Her aunt was taken into custody at the family’s Auckland home on Tuesday, and was due to be deported to Tonga with the two children, aged 8 and 10, last night.
The deportation has since been paused after Immigration NZ admitted its compliance officers failed to check all the details before surrounding the house and detaining the aunt, the only adult home at the time.
Immigration NZ general manager of compliance and investigations Steve Watson said officers had looked at only some of the information held on file.
“We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen again,” he said.
The family, all of whom are unlawfully in New Zealand, are now fighting to stay. Their case is a complicated one, involving four children caught in limbo and a young aunt and uncle who took them in when they had nowhere else to go.
Four siblings facing deportation were left in limbo after Immigration New Zealand admitted officers failed to consider key information about their circumstances and the family caring for them. (Source: 1News)
The children’s story began three years ago, when they travelled to New Zealand for a family baptism with the grandparents who looked after them. The four siblings, aged 8 to 17, had been in their grandparents’ care because their parents live in Australia and are no longer in their lives.
Soon after arriving, their grandfather was rushed to hospital for urgent heart treatment. The grandparents returned to Tonga, no longer able to care for their four grandchildren.
The children stayed with a New Zealand resident aunt and uncle, but with five children of their own, nine children in a three-bedroom home became untenable.
Another young aunt and uncle, then in their late twenties, stepped forward to take in the children, who were here unlawfully but had nowhere to stay in any country.
“I remember my wife said to me that even though it’s not our own kids, they’re God’s children,” the uncle said.
“That’s the thing that was making me very emotional on that day, and then I told myself, I’m going to look after these kids no matter what happens.”
The couple were also in New Zealand unlawfully. They said a family member had helped them make several applications to become legal, which went nowhere, but once the four children were in their care they knew they had to hire a licensed immigration adviser.
Pacific Immigration Consultancy and Services licensed immigration adviser Koli Vanisi said the family’s case was one of the more complicated he had come across.
He has made two applications, one to the Associate Minister of Immigration, outlining the couple’s care of the four children and including a signed document from the children’s parents handing guardianship to them. Both were declined.
“The rights of the children, that’s my main concern,” he said.
“They are innocent, they have nothing to do with these problems. Consider the humanitarian aspect of the case.”
No idea
When the aunt was taken into custody on Tuesday, it became clear compliance officers had no idea of the extent of the couple’s care for the children.
Immigration NZ national manager of immigration compliance Fadia Mudafar said in a statement it was only when the aunt was detained that “we became aware that the four children were also unlawfully in New Zealand and were being looked after by [the couple]”.
Over the course of further interviews in the following days, “we gained a fuller understanding of the nature of the couple’s caregiving arrangements”, she said.
Watson said the fact remained that the whole family was in New Zealand unlawfully, “and there has to be a resolution to that”.
“So we’ve paused the deportation process, and one of the reasons we’ve paused it is because we want to understand the guardianship arrangements and the care arrangements.
“I can’t predict what is going to happen in the future, but all I can say is that if the family wants to resolve their situation, getting professional advice is the absolute best thing they can do.”
Hoping for a miracle
Deportation is still very much on the cards, but the family is hoping for a miracle.
The four children are doing well at school, with one a school captain and others playing club rugby. The two oldest want to become a nurse and a police officer. The youngest couldn’t read English when she arrived, but with coaching from her aunt and uncle she has learnt to read from the scriptures.
The family live in a modern three-bedroom home. The uncle works during the day to cover rent and bills, and goes fishing most weeks to make sure there’s food on the table.
The couple say they want to give the children stability.
“They’re doing great. They learn with us teaching them and they’re also teaching us. They’re really good kids,” the uncle said.
He said he hoped the family would be allowed to stay.
“I don’t like it here, I love it here I tell them, I know it’s a really hard life and I know you guys didn’t deserve to be like this, but I will try to help you,” he said.
“I can see their future now if they have the opportunity to stay here.”
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