Supreme Court rejects appeal from Vietnamese cannabis grower who wants to stay in New Zealand

Ngoc Hong Truong was sentenced to five months' community detention. Three years later, she was served with a deportation notice. Photo / 123RF

A woman who was caught growing cannabis has failed in her final bid to appeal her conviction after claiming she wouldn’t have pleaded guilty if she’d known it would mean she could be kicked out of the country.

Ngoc Hong Truong took her fight to stay in New Zealand all the way to the Supreme Court after the Court of Appeal turned down her application to have her 2019 cultivation of cannabis charge quashed earlier this year.

She was sentenced to five months’ community detention and ordered to pay back $2500 worth of electricity she and her husband had stolen to power the operation, which saw them caught with 50 cannabis plants worth between $20,000 and $69,000.

Truong was originally from Vietnam and first came to New Zealand in 2010 as a student, and was living here as a permanent resident when she was arrested for her role in the cannabis-growing syndicate.

Under the Immigration Act, she then became liable for deportation because of her convictions.

However, Immigration NZ only sent her the deportation notice some three years later due to the stress the convictions caused Truong, along with the separation from her husband, who was sentenced to nine months’ home detention for his role in the offending and then deported.

Truong then filed for a discharge without conviction for her cultivation of cannabis charge on the basis that she wouldn’t have pleaded guilty if she’d known it would make her liable for deportation.

She also claims her lawyer did not tell her she could apply to be discharged without conviction, which would have better protected her residency status if successful.

“The appellant says that she understood that once she had been sentenced and had completed her sentence of community detention, apart from paying off the reparation ordered by the court, the whole matter would be behind her,” the Court of Appeal decision, which was released in April, said.

“She says that had she been aware that the conviction for the charges she was facing would have immigration consequences, she would have asked her lawyer what steps could be taken to avoid that happening.

“Further, if she had known that she could apply for a discharge without conviction on the grounds of her risk of deportation, she would have done so,” the decision said.

Truong told the court she had suffered significant mental health issues as a result of her husband’s deportation, and the prospect of being deported herself was very unsettling. She had been receiving further counselling.

She was living in Auckland with her two young children, working between three and six hours a day for six days a week as a beauty technician.

The Court of Appeal declined Truong’s bid to quash her conviction, so she took her fight to the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court today dismissed an application for leave to apppeal.

The Supreme Court said the risk of deportation was not out of proportion with the gravity of Truong’s offending, and ultimately, the deportation notice had been served at the discretion of the Minister for Immigration.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.