Government rejects Samoan deportee's bid to stay in New Zealand

Mose will be deported back to Samoa as soon as Immigration NZ can sort the paperwork. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

A rapist who grew up in New Zealand will be deported to Samoa, where he has no family, and can't speak the language, after the Immigration Minister today turned down his appeal to stay here.

Mose has spent the past 15 years in prison for two sexual assaults he committed at the age of 14 and for bashing a prison guard while inside. Last month he was served with deportation papers to his birth country.

Mose appealed to the Minister of Immigration, saying he was being sent to a place that he hasn't lived in since he was 4 and has no family or other connections.

However, this evening he was told his request to stay in New Zealand was turned down by the minister and he would be deported to Samoa.

His lawyer Mike Sceats says it was New Zealand that made him a criminal, not Samoa, and called the Government hypocritical for criticising Australia's controversial 501 policy when they were essentially doing the same thing to Vaipapa.

"We're disappointed the Government didn't even bother to read the new information we put forward."

"It basically says we haven't looked at it and we don't have to.

"And the law is completely on their side, he's locked out of the appeal process and he's out of time by decades."

Mose says he's not sure what he's going to do now.

"I've told my brother ... but I don't know how I'm gonna tell my mum."

"I did some shit things, and I regret it every day. There's not one minute I don't think about it. I never saw myself as the kind of person who did that sort of thing, man I've got sisters.

"I was on drugs, I was a child, I went through shit someone my age shouldn't go through. I learned that shit because of the Government, they put me in homes where I was abused.

"When you're a child you're just a mirror, you reflect back what happens to you."

Mose will be deported back to Samoa as soon as Immigration NZ can sort the paperwork. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

Mose says it seemed the Government only saw the bad side of him.

"They've got a picture of me, and it's not me, but I've got out and I've stayed on track."

Sceats and the staff from the Porirua Community Law Centre who were working to keep Vaipapa in the country claimed New Zealand has a responsibility to look after him.

Sceats said Mose fell through the cracks at primary school because the teachers thought he was stupid.

After that he began getting into trouble and went through a number of boys' homes in Porirua between 2004 and 2009 before being sent to the now infamous Epuni Boys' Home in Lower Hutt.

There Mose says was sexually assaulted at the age of 12.

"He's been labelled as stupid, dangerous and violent. He's been set up to fail all his life," Sceats said.

"My personal view is that technically he wasn't born here but he was made and broken here."

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has long been critical of the Australian 501 deportation policy where New Zealanders are deported from Australia and sent back home.

Any non-citizen who has been sentenced to more than a year in prison in Australia can be deported under the 501 policy, even if they served their time years earlier.

So far more than 2000 ex-Kiwis have been deported since the policy was introduced in 2014. The deportees are named after section 501 of the Australian Migration Act which allows their visas to be cancelled.

Mose taught himself to draw while in prison, and to read and write by watching the subtitles on television. Photo / Jeremy Wilkinson

Several weeks ago Ardern met with Australia's new leader Anthony Albanese to push for changes to the law. Albanese said after the meeting that the 501 policy would stay, although he promised to "work through" implementation issues with New Zealand.

On the same day, Immigration New Zealand was serving Vaipapa with a deportation notice.

The week after, Ardern met with the Samoan Prime Minister to discuss deportations back to the Pacific now that Covid restrictions had eased.

Mose first came to New Zealand with his mother and siblings when he was 4, piggybacking on her passport.

He committed his first imprisonable offences while she was in the process of sorting out residency for her family and it was recommended her son be removed from the application for the rest of the family to be successful.

At present Mose is under strict supervision and electronically-monitored bail while he now waits to be officially deported.

When Open Justice met with Mose at his address in Trentham several weeks ago he said he was extremely sorry for what he'd done.

"I wish I could go back and punch myself, shake that young Mose and ask him what the hell he's doing?"

Mose said when he was first served the deportation notice in prison when he was 17, he didn't understand what it meant.

"I was still just a kid. The only thing that sunk in was that if I ever got parole then I'd be straight on a plane.

"I don't even remember being in Samoa. I thought I was a New Zealander for half my life."

Open Justice reported earlier this year that New Zealand sent 400 criminals back to Pacific nations between 2013-2018 - a move that a newly released report said was contributing to a growing crime and drug addiction in those countries.