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Immigration officers accused of assault in forcing pair onto plane

Immigration officials deporting a 31/2-year-old girl and her mother were thwarted yesterday when a High Court judge barred them from removing the child only minutes before her plane was due to depart.

The pair were already strapped in their seats on board the flight to Manila when the judge intervened.

The release capped off a traumatic day for Teresita Trumpo Failano, 39. She was handcuffed in front of her daughter, Janine Shaina Ma, in the Victoria Immigration Centre about 1pm after she tried to extend their bail ahead of their next court appearance in August.

Ms Failano was instead told the department had bought her and her daughter a ticket on Cathay Pacific Flight CX903 departing for Manila at 4.30pm.

A panicked Ms Failano contacted solicitors firm Massie & Clement, who roped in barrister Phillip Ross to appear in an urgent closed-door hearing in the Court of First Instance before Mrs Justice Verina Bokhary. At 4.15pm, Mrs Justice Bokhary ordered that the Director of Immigration be restrained from removing Janine from the jurisdiction until the next court date, which she brought forward to next Friday.

Ms Failano was last night taken to hospital for assessment after she and her solicitors filed an official complaint with police for alleged assault and use of excessive force  by three female and two male immigration officers.

Ms Failano showed the South China Morning Post bruises to her wrists and forearms that she claimed were inflicted when the officials dragged and pulled her by the handcuffs. They also pulled her hair, punched her arm and kicked her in front of her daughter after separating the pair, she said.

Ms Failano broke down in tears when she tried to describe her relief at being taken off the plane.

'I was really crying for happiness and I do not know how to repay the lawyers. They have been very good to me,' she said.

'I was shocked how they [immigration] treated me, and I said to them, 'I am not a criminal, why are you doing this to me?'

'She [Janine] was screaming out and crying out 'Mummy, Mummy'.

'If I landed in Manila I would be on the streets with the baby.'

The Post was told Ms Failano had been fighting to have her daughter, born at the Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital on December 18, 2000, declared a permanent resident.

The only hurdle was that the girl's father, a Hong Kong permanent resident of Pakistani origin, was refusing to sign a copy of the birth certificate.

The mother had launched a judicial review into the department's removal order for her child but first had to await the outcome of a Legal Aid appeal scheduled for August. Ms Failano herself has no claim for residency, and is not pursuing it.

An Immigration Department spokesman refused to comment on an individual case but  a department source said the mother had been forewarned about her repatriation.

The mother had been given time to prove that her daughter was a Hong Kong permanent resident but failed to do so, the source said.



Court stops deportation of HK-born girl, mum