By Gill Bonnett of RNZ

• Refugees’ residence visas will be cancelled if they pose a national security risk under new legislation.
• The new legislation follows a review after Ahamed Samsudeen’s 2021 attack, highlighting challenges in deporting dangerous refugees.
• Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said the changes aim to restrict and monitor potential threats without deportation.

Refugees’ residence visas will be cancelled if they pose a risk to national security, under government legislation introduced last month.

A review following a suspected terrorist attack in an Auckland supermarket four years ago found it was not possible under international law to take immigration action against refugees who security services believed were dangerous.

Even after Ahamed Samsudeen’s refugee status was cancelled in 2019 due to fraud – discrepancies in his asylum claim – it was believed he would still qualify as a protected person under the Immigration Act, and so it was unlikely he could be deported.

That meant he also could not be detained after his time in prison, and in the two months before the LynnMall attack in 2021 security services and the police could only monitor his movements.

He seriously injured four women and a man with a knife during the attack at Countdown in LynnMall before he was shot dead by police who were following him.

Former justice minister Andrew Little said in the wake of the attack there was an “intolerable tension” in protecting someone who risked the lives of others. The Government introduced a law which made the planning or preparation of a terrorist act a criminal offence.

The new legislation, introduced last month, would still not allow would-be terrorists to be deported – but they could have their residence visas cancelled and replaced with temporary ones.

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said international law will not allow a protected person to be deported.

“I don’t think there’s a single person in New Zealand that wouldn’t be upset about that. But New Zealand, as many other countries that we compare ourselves to who uphold international law, are caught in the same very, very difficult position – we’re trapped because we can’t deport them, because of the risk to their life.

“But when they are here, of course, they’re the not the type of person we would prefer to be here. So that really does come down to doing everything we can – stripping them of their residence, putting them on temporary class visas and ensuring that police are monitoring them.”

Without residence and potentially citizenship, if the situation in their home country changed they could be deported, she said – and not having residence might also make them weigh up their future.

“I hope that they would be in a far more restricted and uncertain place, that they would likely leave themselves. Or potentially, make them think twice about the activity that they’re going to do in the first place, because we are not going to protect you to the same level that we were before, in terms of giving you a residence class visa and allowing you to buy a house, sponsor family members and all those things. It will be more restrictive and so, hopefully they’ll think twice, and then secondly, hopefully they will self-deport.”

But immigration lawyer Stewart Dalley said he did not see the point of the change, and called it an empty gesture.

“The only thing served by cancelling the residence visa is that the person cannot vote or sponsor somebody else for a visa. They will also not be able to purchase a house, but the reality is that a lot of people can’t afford to buy a house in New Zealand.”

He suggested the Government should await the outcome of the upcoming inquest into Ahamed Samsudeen before designing policies to address similar situations.

“I’m conscious that you don’t make friends by appearing to support people who pose a risk to the country. But what’s proposed here doesn’t serve anything and doesn’t serve to protect New Zealanders. If the hope is to make things so bad for the person that they’ll leave the country, you’ve got a question how likely is it that the person who has a credible threat of torture and death in the home country is going to leave New Zealand in those circumstances?”

‘Protect the community’

However, Waikato university law professor Alexander Gillespie welcomed the move, and wanted to see firmer action.

“Ninety-nine point nine percent of refugees are never in that situation where they represent a threat to our country, and I firmly believe we should do more to accept more refugees from overseas. But if you allow people in or allow them to stay, if they are a threat to the community, it’s not only the damage that they do to the community, it’s the damage that they do to future refugees.”

He hopes the inquest may look at whether Samsudeen ‘gamed’ the system in becoming a refugee, and whether people in his situation should be deported.

“I’ll be interested to see whether there are recommendations about being able to exit people who are clearly a threat to the community. Even though you may have a risk to a refugee, if there’s a risk to the wider community that they’re sitting in, the balance should be on protecting the community.”

Documents released to RNZ in the aftermath of the Lynnmall attack showed Samseudeen asked immigration officials to revoke his residence, and told them to hurry up his deportation.

But the 32-year-old later fought attempts to send him back to Sri Lanka, where he said he had been abducted with his father by a paramilitary group linked to the guerrilla organisation Tamil Tigers.

Questions remain over whether he was planning to fight in Syria when he was arrested before a flight to Singapore, and if – and when – he had been radicalised. He appeared on the security service (SIS) radar in 2015 because of Facebook posts and police found a knife and extremist material at his home, which a judge said showed his interest in ISIS, or Islamic State

A criminologist who deemed the LynnMall attacker “low risk” in 2018 believed there were missed opportunities to steer him away from violent extremism, saying he was marginalised and depressed.

- RNZ