Officials try to deport terrified girl

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

In a morning raid, police and immigration officers took a screaming 10-year-old girl from her adoptive parents' home to deport her to Samoa - although she has no close family there.

A lawyer, Alex Hope, who got a last-minute court order to stop the deportation, yesterday accused the Immigration Service of "cruel and heartless" behaviour.

Mr Hope said the officers took the child, Cristine Tilo, and her 21-year-old cousin, Seneuefa Tilo, from Cristine's adoptive parents in Hamilton on Friday morning.

They were held in police cells and were to be put on a plane to Samoa at 8.40 pm.

About 7.30 pm, during an urgent hearing in the High Court at Hamilton, Justice Grant Hammond granted an interim injunction against their removal order.

The adopted child is in this country on a student's permit and her cousin has a visitor's permit.

Both had expired, Mr Hope said.

Applications would be made today for their renewal, and later for permanent residency.

Cristine was adopted as a baby in 1991, according to a Samoa Magistrate's Court order.

Her adoptive parents, Matafusi and Tiresa Tilo, were granted New Zealand citizenship in 1996.

They could not be contacted last night and Cristine is staying with relatives in South Auckland.

An aunt, Peti Longtime, of Manurewa, said the girl was very frightened when the officers took her.

"She just couldn't understand what's going on."

Cristine was cared for in Samoa first by her grandmother, then by another aunt - both now New Zealand citizens - then by Seneuefa. Cristine and Seneuefa came to New Zealand last June.

"There's nobody in my family left in [Samoa]. The house is empty now," said Peti Longtime.

An Immigration Service spokesman, Ian Smith, said: "It seems to be a complicated family situation and Immigration hadn't been given all the information."

He added: "As soon as we became aware there might be outstanding issues, the removal order was stopped."

He would not elaborate.

Mr Hope said the information Mr Smith was referring to was that Cristine had been legally adopted and was living with her parents.

He said that when first shown the adoption papers by Mr Tilo, a Samoan Unity Church minister, the immigration officers "did not want to know ... The law is the law and they were going to bowl on and do it."

The Immigration Service told him after the High Court injunction that it had cancelled the removal orders.

Mr Hope asserted that Immigration had made no arrangements for Cristine's care once she arrived in Samoa.

Her family had all come to live in New Zealand legally.

The service ought to have made sure what was going to happen when she arrived in Samoa - "especially since they had been shown the adoption papers" - even though she had come to New Zealand with her cousin, said Mr Hope.

He had not got to the bottom of the case, he said, but it seemed that an application to extend Cristine's student's permit had been made, possibly to an immigration consultant.

A request had come back for a medical certificate, but nothing further had happened.

"Should a child be punished for someone else's failure to act properly on their behalf?" he said.

He was ashamed that a child could be treated as Cristine was when as a nation, "we get so self-righteous" about human rights abuses in other countries.