A former MMA fighter turned stay-at-home dad who said he became a patched Mongrel Mob member under the mistaken impression that the Queensland chapter was a benevolent, community-oriented group has won a four-year fight to avoid deportation from Australia as a 501.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia, which has the power to overturn the Immigration Minister’s deportation decisions, was dubious of 34-year-old Maia Rawiri Charles Emery’s ignorance claim regarding the gang, describing it in a recent 100-page decision as “inherently implausible”.

But the tribunal also described Emery’s criminal history as “unremarkable”, even while in the gang, and found him to be at a low risk of reoffending or rejoining the group. The tribunal also found that deportation would be detrimental to his three teenage children and his 3-year-old niece, who he also helped to raise while staying at home with his children as his partner worked odd hours as a chef.

Emery — who moved from New Zealand to Australia with his family in 2013, at the age of 25 — first found himself facing potential deportation in September 2018, while still a member of the gang. He said he cut ties with the Mongrel Mob months later, disillusioned by its lack of “community building”, and successfully appealed against the deportation decision. But a new attempt to cancel his visa was launched last March.

 “I was going through some depression and stuff just being a stay-at-home father and I was pretty much just wanting friends,” he said of joining the gang in 2017 as he testified last month during a tribunal hearing in Brisbane.

A former amateur mixed-martial arts fighter, he remembered that training was something that had helped keep him stable during other times of turmoil, he said.

“I went and found the boxing club at Eagleby, which happened to be run by them, and it was cheap enough for me to take me and my children there, so I kept going and I got to know them and then, yeah, that’s how my affiliation started,” he testified.

Forensic psychologist Jacqui Yoxall, who testified on behalf of Emery at the tribunal hearing, also provided background on the gang membership.

 “He said that when he met them, Mongrel Mob members told him that they were separate to other aspects of the Mongrel Mob in NZ who were involved in crime,” she wrote in a report. “He said he was told that the Brisbane Chapter was focused on building community and supporting families and supporting young people. He said that they said they were anti-drugs and anti-weapons.

“He said that he believed them.”

Their common areas of interest, she said, appeared to be fitness training, boxing and martial arts.

In November 2017, he travelled to Melbourne for a patching ceremony, he would later acknowledge to police. He also had a tattoo of the number “13″ on his leg, which police said connected him to the Waikato faction of the gang, and police noted he lived “in very close proximity” to the gang’s president.

“Mr Emery said that gang member activities seemed to change over time,” the forensic psychologist reported. “He said that members of the club started to become involved in illegal activities that he wasn’t interested in being involved in. He said that he was pushed to [the] outside.

“He said that his drinking increased during that time because he felt so stressed and conflicted. He said that he tried to salvage some friendships but this was not successful. Then in July 2018 the Mongrel Mob was outlawed under Queensland laws regarding organised criminal groups. He said that he withdrew his membership soon thereafter ...”

Yoxall testified that it was courageous and “no small feat for anyone to remove themselves” from the gang — a process she described as bringing its own potential dangers.

During his own testimony, Emery recalled one time he suggested to fellow gang members that they help beautify their community by picking up rubbish from area parks once a month.

“They would all agree that it’s a good idea, but then nothing would ever come of it,” he said.

But senior tribunal member Theodore Tavoularis, who authored the report, said there is “an inherent implausibility” in Emery’s suggestion that “his involvement with the Mongrel Mob was strictly for non-criminal and community-based and benevolent purposes” when senior members of the group had known criminal histories. He also rejected the idea that Emery was surprised and stressed about the group’s illegal activities.

He pointed to multiple media articles, including one from the Daily Mail in March 2018 that began: “One of New Zealand’s most notorious gangs – with, as one media outlet calls ‘a history of child rape, kidnapping and public brawling’ – is making a move into Australia.”

Regardless, the tribunal member wrote, the requirements for deportation do not require proof that a person was sympathetic or supportive of an outlaw gang’s criminal conduct. A “reasonable suspicion” by authorities that Emery was a member of the gang was enough to meet the requirement alone, he noted. As such, he determined, Emery failed the good character test that has been used as a basis for the deportation of hundreds of New Zealanders in recent years.

But there are other factors that also must be taken into consideration, Tavoularis noted.

A neighbour described Emery in a written statement as a “well-balanced family-orientated man”, while a former co-worker described him as soft-spoken and kind and the chairman of the Queensland Māori Society told the tribunal he was a “great asset” to the community due to his support of at-risk youth.

“He has been knocked down before, gotten up and kept trying, but this visa cancellation is a really big knock for Maia,” his mother told the tribunal. “It feels undeserved. It’s his choices that got him here but the cancellation is a result of his true beliefs that he wasn’t doing anything wrong and actually trying to do good for the community in line with kaupapa of the Kingdom Chapter.

“... He’s never caused trouble. He’s never hurt people outside of a ring.”

Emery’s partner of nearly 20 years said she had been struggling in her new role as a single parent in the three months since Australian authorities split their family by taking Emery to an immigration detention facility.

Tribunal member Tavoularis pointed out that in most cases “the tribunal is dealing with one parent who has spent much of their lives offending with the result that the other parent has fulfilled the primary parenting role in the lives of any relevant child/children”. But that’s not the case this time, he said.

“I am satisfied there is a strong and convincing likelihood that the applicant will play an extensive and positive parental role in the future lives of the three biological children,” he wrote. “There is no denying that he has acted as the primary homemaker and parent for these three children and there is, likewise, little or nothing to suggest that he will not immediately resume this role in the event of his return to the Australian community.”