The government will carry out an investigation into how the Immigration Service held a dawn raid on a Pasifika overstayer last week in South Auckland.
Only two years ago the then Jacinda Ardern-led Labour government apologised for the infamous 1970s Dawn Raids.
The first female Pasifika deputy prime minister, Carmel Sepuloni, who is also acting prime minister this week while Chris Hipkins attends King Charles' coronation, said it was a part of New Zealand history repeating itself.
“I don’t like it and it’s re-traumatising a community that was traumatised during a period of time that was a very dark period for the Pacific community, so we don’t want to see it,” Sepuloni told media.
She was talking about a dawn raid in South Auckland last week in which an overstayer was detained.
The 1970s dawn raids under the Muldoon National government of the time resulted in the arrests, prosecution and deportation of anyone who looked Pasifika even though many overstayers of the time were European.
'Hugely disappointing'
“The Minister of Immigration is asking questions and interrogating what happened here. None of us are happy with what’s been reported and we certainly want to get to the bottom of it,” Sepuloni said.
The dawn raids of the seventies have been described as the most blatantly racist attack on Pasifika peoples by the New Zealand government in New Zealand's history.
“It’s hugely disappointing and uncomfortable and we need to get all the information out of Immigration New Zealand," Spuloni said.
It also led to the rise of the Polynesian Panthers who raised awareness of identity and nationhood.
It was only two years ago that then prime minister Jacinda Ardern gave a public apology for the infamous dawn raids: “Today I stand on behalf of the New Zealand government to offer a formal and unreserved apology to Pacific communities for the discriminatory implementation of the immigration laws of the 1970s that led to the events of the dawn raids.”
'Completely unacceptable'
Immigration Minister Michael Wood said he was advised about this particular event shortly after it happened. "What I do know is, of the operations that Immigration NZ conducts, about 3% of them are outside of normal hours, which isn’t necessarily always in the morning, but 97% of them occur during normal hours, so we know that it’s very rare for them to do this.”
However, other politicians said there was nothing normal about it.
ACT leader David Seymour said: “It was wrong then and it would be wrong now.”
Greens co-leader Marama Davidson said it was "completely unacceptable. We apologise for it, we should not be doing it still."
Although Wood defended his ministry, he said it was not an easy job.
“We are dealing with a very different situation here. The dawn raid apology quite rightly applies to a massive systemic approach,” he said.