Australia has started to deport foreign detainees to Nauru, marking the start of a controversial deal with the tiny Pacific island nation.
In a statement on Tuesday, Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke confirmed that “the first transfer had occurred” last Friday, although how many people were deported is unknown.
The deal was struck after Australia’s top court ruled that it could not indefinitely detain about 358 people, the bulk of whom have been convicted of crimes, forcing their release into the community.
Human rights groups have criticised the deal, which is expected to cost A$2.5billion (£1.64bn; $1.23bn).
The Australian government has repeatedly refused to release details of the agreement for the so-called NZYQ cohort, and refugee advocates say it goes against the country’s human rights obligations.
Laura John, from the Human Rights Law Centre, told SBS News the plans have been “shrouded in secrecy from the outset”.
“We do not know if the person who has been exiled has left family behind in Australia, whether they need medical care that is unavailable in Nauru, or even if they still have visa appeal options in Australia.”
The NZYQ cohort refers to a group of detainees who were released into the Australian community after a landmark High Court decision in 2023 found that the government’s power to hold them indefinitely in immigration detention was unlawful.
Many of them had been convicted of serious crimes, including assault, drug smuggling, and murder, leading to their Australian visas being cancelled.
The Australian government found itself in a difficult situation, unable to send the former detainees back to their home countries for fear of persecution or because their government wouldn’t accept them, but also facing severe backlash from the public for their release into the community.
Last year, the government, under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, made changes to the Migration Act, bolstering its powers to deport non-citizens, in a move critics described as “brutal”.
It included paying third countries to take Australia’s deportees.
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Australia turned to Nauru, and under the agreement, which was finalised earlier this year, the deportees are given a 30-year visa that allows them to work on the island and mix freely with its 12,500 inhabitants.
The first transfer triggers an upfront payment of A$408 million to resettle the group in Nauru.
Aside from these details, little is known about the agreement.
“People are secretly being sent to Nauru, with key aspects of the deal still kept from the Australian public”, immigration spokesperson for the Greens party, David Shoebridge, told Australian media.
Criticising the lack of transparency in the plan and “contemptuous silence” from Minister Tony Burke, Shoebridge also expressed concern that once the deportees arrive in Nauru, they could then be sent back to their home countries.
“No matter who you are or where you were born, governments should not be able to disappear you, send you off against your will to a country that you have zero connection to,” he said.
Burke has defended the arrangement, telling the Australian Broadcasting Corporation he has inspected the accommodation and health facilities on Nauru and “the standard there is good”.
“When somebody has come and treated Australians in a way that shows an appalling character, their visas do get cancelled, and when their visas are cancelled, they should leave,” Burke has previously said.
This deal is separate from the arrangement for Nauru to run Australia’s offshore immigration processing regime.
That system was scaled back following international condemnation of how the detainees were treated and housed.
