Hera Pepene, 44, was deported to Christchurch from Australia three days before Christmas. She was forced to leave her daughter, grandson and mother in Australia.

Hera Pepene will never see her mother again.

Her mum is elderly and unable to travel. Pepene can not re-enter Australia, even for a short visit, after authorities ruled she was "not of good character", cancelled her visa and sent her back to a city she no longer recognises as home.

The 44-year-old fled Christchurch 12 years ago with her children to escape a destructive "Jake the Muss" lifestyle of gangs, drugs and beatings.

STACY SQUIRES/FAIRFAX NZ Hera Pepene, 44, was forced to leave her family in Australia when she was deported to Christchurch.

"I wanted to give them (children) a better life."

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She settled in Cairns and got a job. She says she managed to give her children the life she craved while in New Zealand.

STACY SQUIRES/FAIRFAX NZ Jack Reihana, 44, has been living in Christchurch for eight weeks after being deported from Australia, where he has lived since he was 17.

But in 2011, Pepene committed a crime and in 2013 she was sentenced to eight months jail and 10 months parole. She will not say what the crime was.

Ten months after her parole had ended, immigration officials asked her to come in for a meeting. When she arrived, Border Patrol was there and she was told her visa had been cancelled.

From that moment on, she was in custody. She was not allowed to go home. Her sister got her some clothes and she was allowed to see her mum, before being taken to a hotel for the night. The next day she was flown away from Cairns to a Melbourne detention centre.

"It was the last time I saw my mum."

After two months in the detention centre, she was deported to Christchurch three days before Christmas 2015.

She left behind most of her family including a daughter and grandson. The impact of the move has hit Pepene hard.

"I feel like a foreigner in my own town. I feel like my soul has gone."

With the help of Canterbury Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society (Pars), she has managed to get a Housing New Zealand house, but has not found work yet.

"If it wasn't for Pars, I don't know where I would be," Pepene says.

"I said goodbye to Christchurch. Cairns is my home."

When asked what she sees for her future Pepene says quite frankly, she can not see a future.

Pepene is one of 327 offenders who have been deported from Australia since December 2014 when law changes across the ditch opened the way for Kiwis – who have committed crimes and been sentenced to jail for 12 months or more – to be deported.

Many arrive at the airport suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and depression after having spent time in Australian detention centres, Canterbury PARS manager Helen Murphy says.

PARS organisations help reintegrate the offenders into life in New Zealand. It registers the offenders with a doctor and arranges a check up, it helps set up a bank account, gets them registered with Work and Income, arranges a bus card, library card, enrols them in an employment agency, sorts out their driver licences and tries to find them accommodation.

The Corrections Department gave Auckland Pars $200,000 last year to distribute to its organisations across the country to help fund this work.

Murphy says the offenders are battling the stereotype that they are all "rapists and murderers" and many are finding it hard to get jobs because of their convictions.

She is upset at the lack of compassion Australia is showing these offenders and hopes it will one day allow them back in the country, at least for compassionate grounds. One deportee she is working with is unable to go back to see his father, who is dying of cancer.

"He's not going to see his dad again, ever."

Another offender, who does not want to be named, says he is suffering from depression and is seeing a counsellor to help him deal with the situation he has found himself in.

He saw some horrific things at the detention centre in Darwin.

"Some people hang themselves and some people cut themselves in their own room."

The man spent two months at that centre, before being deported to Christchurch in late January.

His deportation has caused problems with his marriage and he has a three-month-old baby, born on Christmas Day, he has never met.

The man, who speaks with an Australian twang, calls Brisbane home. He has lived there since he was five and has left behind a wife and three young children.

He was born in Auckland, but opted to go to Christchurch, because he thought he would have a better chance of gaining employment there. Despite actively seeking work, he has been unable to find anything yet. He thinks employers are put off by his criminal record.

He stole a credit card and used it to buy a $14,000 wheelchair for his son. The man's five-year-old son contracted meningococcal meningitis when he was a baby and had to have his legs amputated through the knees. His son had been in hospital for a year following complications caused by the disease, and he needed a $14,000 wheelchair before he could be released.

The man says hospital officials told him, if he could not provide the wheelchair, his son would go into care.

"I did what I had to do in the situation I was put in."

The judge allowed the man's son to keep the wheelchair, and he was sentenced to three months prison and 10 months parole.

On the day he was to be released from jail, with his family waiting outside for him, he was told his visa had been revoked. He was taken to a hotel in Brisbane and the next day he was sent to a detention centre in Darwin.

He had two hours to see his heavily pregnant wife and two children, aged five and seven, before having to leave Brisbane.

He was now hoping his family would be able to join him in Christchurch.

"I really want my family here."

Jack Reihana has been in Christchurch for eight weeks and like many deportees has been unable to find permanent accommodation or employment. He is living at the Salvation Army.

Reihana was deported after spending three years in jail for torturing an alleged child abuser.

The 44-year-old has lived in Australia since he was 17. He was working as a truck driver in Australia and was now trying to get his New Zealand licences sorted so he could work as a driver here too, but he has found the tests difficult.

"I always had work. I had everything I needed (in Australia). Now I have nothing."

Another deportee, who did not want to be named because of the stigma attached to deportees, spent 13 months in a detention centre north of Perth waiting for a decision on his appeal to the visa cancellation.

"I found the whole thing traumatic. My head is so smashed and scarred.

"It's taken all this time for my brain to work, to get one foot in front of the other."

He was sentenced to 12 months for common assault, including six months jail and six months parole. He had 17 days to go before finishing his parole when his visa was cancelled and was sent from his Brisbane home to the Perth centre.

"I have done the crime and done the time and then I've done 13 months for nothing. We accept the fact that we have done wrong and accept the laws but for them to treat us like dogs?"

He says he would rather have gone back to jail than stay at the detention centre. He left Christchurch when he was 36. He is now 51.

"I came back here with nothing. No one wants to meet you."

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