A Vietnamese woman who was convicted for her part in a cannabis-growing operation did not realise that pleading guilty would make her liable to deportation.

Ngoc Hong Truong has now failed in an appeal to have her conviction and sentence quashed, meaning she is likely to have to go through the process to decide whether she should be removed from New Zealand.

Her ex-husband has already been sent back to Vietnam. Truong has two children who are New Zealand citizens.

Truong pleaded guilty in 2019 to a single charge of cultivating cannabis and one of stealing electricity, after a meter was bypassed to power the couple’s drug-growing operation.

She was sentenced in the Manukau District Court on April 11, 2019 to five months of community detention and eight months of supervision and ordered to pay reparation of $2532 – her share of the stolen electricity.

She says, however, that she did not know that the convictions would trigger her liability for deportation under the Immigration Act 2009.

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

Truong and her husband, Mr Hoang, were jointly charged following a police investigation in 2017 into the cultivation and supply of cannabis by a Vietnamese syndicate involving several people across Auckland.

The couple’s house was raided and police found 50 juvenile cannabis plants of between 50 and 80 centimetres in height and 23 seedlings, all with a potential crop value of between $21,000 and $69,000.

Hoang also pleaded guilty and served nine months of home detention before being deported.

Truong, who first came to New Zealand as a 16-year-old overseas student in 2010, went to live with him in Vietnam for some months in 2019 and 2022 before returning. They are now separated.

Truong’s two New Zealand-born children are now five and three.

In a letter dated June 27 last year, Immigration New Zealand advised Truong that she was now liable to be deported because of her convictions.

She was asked to fill in a questionnaire and provide personal information before a decision was made.

Truong then chose to appeal against her convictions to the Court of Appeal, but was unsuccessful.

“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 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 that 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.

“She says she is worried that if she is deported and her children return with her to Vietnam, they may decide to return to live and study in New Zealand when they are older,” the court decision said.

“If that were to happen and she herself could not return to New Zealand, she would suffer considerable hardship from being separated from them.”

The Crown told the court that if Immigration NZ decided to pursue deportation, Truong would have opportunities to make submissions in her favour, or appeal to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal if the decision went against her.

The court decided that Truong’s offending was “moderately serious” and that she had failed to show the direct and indirect consequences of the conviction would be “out of all proportion to the gravity of the offence”.

“We consider that the circumstances in which the appellant’s sentencing occurred and in which the appellant’s counsel did not make an application for her to be discharged without conviction have not resulted in a miscarriage of justice,” the Court of Appeal decision said.

Immigration NZ’s General Manager Enablement, Karen Bishop, told Open Justice that “Ms Truong’s deportation matter is still ongoing and no decision on her deportation liability has been made”.

- Ric Stevens, Open Justice