‘Appalling abuse’: Our asylum-seekers in prison
They expect a warm welcome - instead we lock up some of those who seek refuge in New Zealand without charge or trial, often for many months. Why do we still do it? Steve Kilgallon reports.
Afew days into his stay in Mt Eden Prison, another inmate smashed Robert in the head with a payphone, bursting his eardrum. In his 14 months in jail, Robert (we can’t use his real name) says he was repeatedly assaulted, suffered suicidal thoughts, was strip searched, spent six days in an isolation cell and was denied phone calls to his dying father. He says it has caused him long-term depression.
Robert was never charged or convicted of a criminal offence. He had simply arrived in New Zealand and applied for asylum, saying he was at risk of being killed in his home country.
Each year, New Zealand locks up about 15 people who have either claimed refugee status at the border or after overstaying a legitimate visa. The process is also used to hold criminal deportees awaiting a flight home.
Immigration NZ seeks a 28-day renewable ‘‘Warrant of Commitment’’ to detain an asylum seeker if it thinks they’re at risk of absconding, present a danger to the public, are being held while they determine their true identity (some arrive on false passports), or to resolve a claim. Immigration says it starts from the principle of not detaining people and holds only those it feels are a genuine risk.
A UN agreement means asylum-seekers cannot be deported while their claim is being considered. But Amnesty International, which is preparing a report into the practice of putting asylumclaimants in jail, says it may breach our obligations under international law and human rights agreements.
While the majority of asylum-seekers are not detained, and some kept only briefly, others – like Robert – spend many months inside.
Between 2015 and 2019, the average detention of the 86 people held in these situations was 166 days. Eleven of those had spent more than 400 days in prison.
The longest period an asylum-seeker has been held in a New Zealand prison is 1178 days – or just over three years. The man was a South American who had claimed asylum after overstaying. He was released earlier this month with permission to stay permanently.
Tim Maurice, general manager of the Asylum Seekers Support Trust, says the detention of asylum-seekers in this country is a well-kept secret that shocks people.
‘‘At least Australia is overt about this – at least they will announce what their policy is,’’ Maurice says.
‘‘In New Zealand, we do this to people but we don’t talk about it. So we, the Trust, are the ones telling people they will get locked up.’’
Maurice says if public safety is a genuine concern, there are simple alternatives to imprisoning people who’ve committed no crime – including electronic monitoring, curfews, creating a secure unit at the Mangere Resettlement Unit (where newly arrived refugees are housed), or even providing separate accommodation in prison for asylumseekers.
In Robert’s case, Maurice says, it’s clear he was never a danger to this country, so the only real reason for his long and mentally damaging spell in Mt Eden was to dissuade him from staying.
‘‘They keep them in prison to make them give up and go home,’’ says Maurice. ‘‘Because the reasons they are giving [to detain them] don’t make sense to keep the country safe.’’
Robert has now been released, but his asylum claim is still being heard.
That means we cannot report details such as his real name, his country of origin or the details of why he cannot live there. In part, that’s because if, say, he was from Iraq (he isn’t) and said publicly if he went home he would be tortured, that would increase the risk of that happening – and so strengthens his asylum claim. It’s called ‘‘bad faith’’.
But the Sunday Star-Times has seen his paperwork and heard his case and, on the surface, it is understandable why Robert is aggrieved. Unlike many who are detained, he never used a false identity at the border, and provided substantial evidence of his claim and his identity, including documents dating back two decades. He was still kept locked up.
Robert says he wasn’t properly interviewed until two months into his stay when, traumatised and on antidepressants, he was expected to recall details from two decades ago.
‘‘It was like hell,’’ he says of prison. ‘‘There were murderers, rapists, gangs. I have injuries, too many incidents. The guards do nothing, there is nothing they can do – you have to save yourself. If you complain, or are moved to another unit… you are a snitch… and when people come to know you are a snitch, they will hurt you.
‘‘I survived, but many times, I felt like it was my last day.’’
He recalls being held in a prison van before a court hearing and feeling overcome by the car’s diesel fumes and the lack of oxygen and when he complained, he claims the driver said: ‘‘Well f... off and go back to where you came from.’’
He was also taken for hospital treatment in handcuffs, and recalls passers-by hiding their children’s faces from him, a loss of dignity that deeply hurt him.
In contrast, Anthony (also not his real name) was fortunate. But the fact he only spent three weeks inside shows up the inconsistencies of the system. Anthony claimed asylum because he was from a minority persecuted in his home country.
Maurice says Anthony’s luck was manifold: he came from a country not known for terrorists, chanced upon a very good lawyer, happened to have a supportive community here, and the trust found out about him quickly. All that combined meant a deal could be struck with an Immigration officer to have him released to the trust’s hostel. Anthony has since been recognised as a genuine refugee and allowed to stay.
Maurice says, in his experience, most cases are actually resolved in this way, rather than through the courts. He is awaiting an Official Information Act request for data from Immigration to confirm these suspicions.
But still, those three weeks inside have left a mark on Anthony, who had no previous dealings with law enforcement and had absolutely no idea that he might be held in jail when he claimed asylum.
‘‘I had no idea about prison,’’ he says. ‘‘It was like the worst day of my life. I came here, and they told me they were going to put me in prison. I was really shocked.’’
Anthony says he was lucky that in prison, after briefly sharing a cell with a man who had stabbed his wife, and then with a murderer, he was put in a cell with a senior gang member who protected him. The gang member was released a day before him, and even during that one day he feared for his safety after suffering a barrage of Islamophobic abuse.
‘‘It’s not like ‘these guys are asylum-seekers, they won’t harm anyone, so let’s keep them in a different section’ – it’s not like that at all.’’
The man who was held for 1178 days had fled his home nation after assisting a journalist who was murdered after exposing a child sex trafficking ring. He had legitimate visas, but when they expired, he overstayed, claiming asylum only when he was due for deportation. He was held in the remand wing at Waikeria Prison. ‘‘I’m not a
criminal,’’ he told TVNZ earlier this month.
INZ said his detention was drawn out because he had made multiple appeals. He says he became suicidal and suffered broken fingers after a fight with a cellmate. ‘‘I felt my life had been threatened all the time,’’ he said.
All three men were helped by the trust, who usually negotiate release to a stay, under curfew, at their hostel in Glendene, West Auckland, and twice-weekly sign-ins at Immigration’s offices.
Maurice says that without that provision, most detainees would remain in prison until their cases are settled, a process which can take about 18 months.
Once released, Immigration may provide a discretionary grant of $225 to live on, but the detainees are prohibited from working, studying or even volunteering until their claims are resolved, which frustrates Robert, who says he has multiple qualifications which would make finding a job easy. He says without the hostel’s support, he would have struggled to eat.
Maurice says in 15 months of offering the hostel as a release address, they’ve had no absconders. Seven detainees were suddenly released due to the first Covid lockdown, and ‘‘there has been no crime spree, none of them have been arrested’’.
Parminder Singh would be delighted to be enjoying Christmas at the hostel. Instead, he’s spent it inside Mt Eden’s walls.
Held since October on Warrants of Commitment, like the South American recordholder, Singh had overstayed by five years, then claimed asylum, on the grounds that as an asthmatic, he feared death from Covid-19 in his native India, when set for deportation.
Speaking to the Star-Times from prison before one of his recent hearings, Singh said: ‘‘I am in a prison with kidnappers and drug dealers and I don’t believe I belong here.’’
Singh’s immigration advisor, former immigration minister Tuariki Delamere, said he believed the intention of the law was not to keep refugee claimants locked up ‘‘unless they were a threat to the public good’’, and Singh was of no threat, had no criminal history, and could not be at risk of absconding when he had a legal right to be here until his case was settled.
He believes the reality is that Immigration officials are angry at what Parminder has done by claiming asylum on what
Delamere admits are
‘‘long shot’’ grounds and want to punish him.
‘‘I find it is outrageous that the ministers are allowing this to continue. New Zealand is supposed to be better than this, and we are showing that we are not... there is no genuine reason why Parminder should be held in custody. It is an appalling abuse.’’
Singh next appears in court for a warrant hearing on January 17, when he will petition for conditional release on the grounds of providing support for his Kiwi citizen wife’s mental health.
Amnesty International intends to deliver a report early next year into the detention of asylum-seekers. Without pre-determining its findings, Amnesty’s advocacy and policy manager Annaliese Johnston said the group’s investigations so far had raised questions about the validity of the reasons for detaining many of the asylum-seekers, and the abuse some suffered in prison. ‘‘Some of the stories emerging of their treatment in prison is particularly horrific,’’ said Johnston, citing one man who had been forced to take part in a ‘‘fight club’’ while in Mt Eden.
Johnston said Amnesty interviews had also found consistent issues about the fairness of the initial detention of asylum-seekers stopped at the border, with complaints of poor access to interpreters and lawyers.
She was also concerned that when she asked for data on how many detainees suffered injuries while jailed – like Robert – Immigration referred her to Corrections, and Corrections said it had no data because it did not track which inmates were asylum-seekers.
Johnston said Amnesty believed the use of prisons to detain asylum-seekers was ‘‘deeply problematic’’. Asked if New Zealand was breaching its international obligations, she said: ‘‘Very likely.’’
Amnesty would approach immigration minister Kris Faafoi before releasing the report, Johnston said. ‘‘I think the practice has gone on long enough and I think there is real prospect for some change here.’’
Immigration New Zealand’s general manager Steve Vaughan said only ‘‘a very, very small minority’’ of those who claim asylum end up in prison.
‘‘Our absolute over-riding principle is if a person is claiming refugee or protection status, the restriction on their movement should be for the shortest duration and to the least degree possible: that’s our starting point,’’ he said. ‘‘For the vast majority, there is very little restriction placed on them.’’ Vaughan said those detained at the border tended to be those who had arrived without documents, been refused entry, or presented a risk to national security or the security of others. ‘‘We have an absolute responsibility to the community as well, for us it is balanced against the risks an individual poses and the risks to the community.’’
He said the longer cases tended to be those where multiple appeals had been mounted, greatly delaying the process.
In the situation of overstayers who claim asylum when due for deportation, Vaughan says Immigration, legally, has very limited options but to detain them. Similarly, electronic monitoring is not an option legally available to them. And Vaughan said how detainees were accommodated or treated once inside was Corrections’ responsibility and Immigration could not dictate to them.
But Immigration did talk to bodies such as the Asylum Seekers’ Trust to find situations where the risks were reduced enough to allow detainees to be released.
‘‘They keep them in prison to make them give up and go home. Because the reasons they are giving [to detain them] don’t make sense to keep the country safe.’’ Tim Maurice General manager of the Asylum Seekers Support Trust
For Robert, being jailed was a stark contrast to the New Zealand he had expected. ‘‘I only knew New Zealand is the best country. I am seeing all the ‘welcome home’ and ‘you are us’ that the prime minister always states,’’ he says.
‘‘How come you are one of us, when without conviction, or without charge, they are putting us with murderers and rapists?
‘‘I am still not OK. I have mental issues and I am not a normal person.’’