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Three German yachts that were denied entry to this country after reaching the Bay of Islands have been jailed until they board a flight home on Thursday.
This story was originally published on RNZ.co.nz and republished with permission.
Three German yachts that were denied entry to this country after reaching the Bay of Islands have been jailed until they board a flight home on Thursday.
Jacob Kraus, Sophia Ulbrich and Hans Borner were in police custody in Auckland after they arrived in Opua from Tahiti in violation of border restrictions last Friday.
Borner and Kraus will be incarcerated at Mount Eden Prison, while Ulbrich will be in Auckland Women’s Prison until their flight back to Germany on Thursday afternoon.
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The group applied for an exemption after setting sail for New Zealand.
But his request was rejected because the Ministry of Health was not convinced that the ship had an urgent need to enter the country.
The trio, ranging in age from twenty to thirty, appeared in Auckland District Court for an engagement order hearing this afternoon.
The hearing was to decide whether it was necessary to continue detaining them while they wait for their flight back to Germany.
The crew’s duty attorney, Clare Watkins, said the trio had planned to sail from Tahiti to New Zealand, leave their ship at Opua and then fly back to Germany.
“All they want to do is get on a plane and go to Germany,” he said.
She said the group initially wanted to leave the boat in French Polynesia, but were unable to leave it in the water due to the cyclone season and were unable to make other arrangements for storage.
The trio went to New Zealand and applied for the waiver, with Fiji being their backup option if their application was not granted.
They were two days from New Zealand when the Health Ministry told them that their request for exemption had been rejected.
His ship, including the mast, had been damaged during the voyage and was beginning to let in water.
The brewing ocean storms meant they decided to continue on to New Zealand.
Watkins said the trio intended to spend $ 50,000 in New Zealand repairing their boat and thought this would help with their waiver request.
Once they reached land, the group was arrested by Immigration New Zealand.
At this point, they attempted to claim a humanitarian exemption due to their damaged ship.
Attorney Terri Thompson, acting on behalf of Immigration New Zealand, said the trio risked traveling to New Zealand without approval in the Covid-19 climate and should not be released.
She said the group that left for this country without an exemption showed “blatant disregard” for the rules.
Thompson said the group would have been denied entry before Covid-19 as they did not have a visa.
Judge Peter Winter asked if the trio had been tested for Covid-19 and was told that they had all returned a negative test.
He asked if the trio posed a flight risk, and Thompson argued that they did, citing their disregard for immigration, customs and health regulations.
But Wakins argued that it was “totally unreasonable” to have them “sit in a cell” rather than allow them to stay in a hotel with a 24-hour curfew.
Judge Winter ruled that the trio would remain in prison custody until their 3:10 p.m. flight on Thursday afternoon.
He said the three people would be housed separately from other inmates and would have been placed in controlled isolation if they had legitimately entered the country.
Under section 313 of the Immigration Act, a person can be detained for a period of up to 96 hours without a warrant, according to Immigration New Zealand.
If granted, an Order of Compromise allows Immigration to detain a person for up to 28 days.
This story was originally published on RNZ.co.nz and republished with permission.
