Government denies ‘ICE’ claims amid return to detention centre for visa overstayers

Labor insists the federal government’s plan to establish detention centres across the country in a visa crackdown will not lead to the ICE-style immigration raids in seen in the US.

Labor announced it would revert the settings back to the pre-2015 system where anyone overstaying a visa would be taken into a detention centre.

Immigration Minister Tony Burke on Thursday said it was a routine process that worked, leading to detainees organising their own way home and disincentivising other people from overstaying.

But Greens Senator David Shoebridge has accused the government of trying to replicate a “Donald Trump ICE program”, where plainclothes agents have been reported pulling people from the street and homes.

“If you don’t want your immigration changes to look like what Donald Trump does, don’t contract with the same private multinational prison company to open detention centres in Australia because that’s what Labor has said they’re doing,” he told reporters on Friday.

Australia currently has seven immigration detention centres, all operated by the US-based private prison company Management and Training Corporation.

The government also occasionally uses alternative places for detention, like hotel rooms or medical facilities.

Under Labor’s plan, a 100-person Border Force team would remove overstayers and place them in one of the 250 more beds across the country until they leave.

The government has already started scoping out buildings for detention centres near airports.

One of the locations in mind is the former quarantine facility in Melbourne, which was built for the COVID-19 pandemic and has 1000 beds.

Shoebridge said it was “extraordinary” the government is looking to expand the number of detention centres over community-led programs to help people work through the reasons behind overstaying their visas.

“Before 2015 there were programs that actually stopped overstaying, and it didn’t involve two burly blokes turning up and taking you to a private jail,” he said.

Read more

‘Backpacker ballot’ to form part of sweeping migration crackdown

“We know what happens when you throw more people into jail. We know what happens. You entrench opposition. You increase delays.”

Burke downplayed the concerns and said it would not be a system similar to the US.

“This is not the sort of operation that some people have seen on TV happening in other countries,” he said.

“Effectively, what we are going back to doing is simply being able to make sure that if you overstay, you will not be able to say, ‘Well there’s no consequences, as if they’re ever going to make sure that I leave’.

“We need, with the integrity of the program, to make sure that we can go back simply to what we did before 2015. No more and no less.”