Dawn Raid's and Immigration NZ w/ Dylan Asafo: 18 July, 2023

An independent review of Immigration New Zealand’s continued practice of Dawn Raids has found that the law does need to change. The review by Senior Lawyer Mike Heron looked into out-of-hours immigration visits to communities throughout Aotearoa. 

The report found that out-of-hours visits were still being used by immigration in New Zealand and targeted minority communities, particularly Pacific Islanders. 

In the 1970s, dawn raids overly targeted Pacific communities with 86% of related prosecutions being of people of Pacific descent, even though Pasifika accounted for a third of overstayers. US and UK overstayers accounted for another third of total overstayers but accounted for only five per cent of prosecutions over this period. 

The review found that there had been no change to immigration policy since the government’s official 2021 Dawn Raid apology. 

To talk more about the findings of the review and what it means for communities across Aotearoa, producer Andre Fa’aoso spoke to Dylan Asafo, Senior Law Lecturer at the University of Auckland