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Between July 2018 and August 2019, the Home Affairs Department Cost: AUD 6.1 million Flying to refugees, asylum seekers and other immigration detainees across Australia.
The figure includes $5.7 million in charter fees and $400,000 in commercial flights from airlines including QantasThis does not include the cost of keeping aircraft on standby and transporting staff to accompany the detainees. Nor does it include the cost of transporting the detainees by road.
Details of these and other costs result in Labor questions Minister Peter Dutton over why department costs continue to rise. Given that government spending $26.8 million Reopening of Christmas Island detention centre a family Last year, this was a pressing issue.
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Biloela Tamil family deportation case highlights failures of our refugee system
Yet deeper questions about what these resettlements involve and how they affect detainees and their advocates have been largely ignored. As a researcher who studies immigration detention, I can attest that forced resettlements come with significant human costs.
Over the past five years, I have interviewed more than 70 regular visitors to immigration detention centres across Australia. I have gathered eyewitness testimony by speaking to volunteers, advocates, and friends and family members of detainees. Conditions and practices within the system. A constant theme in these interviews is Harm caused by involuntary transfer.
How many forced transfers are happening?
When we think of immigration detention centres, we often think of places of incarceration. That’s accurate, but it’s not the whole picture.
Refugees and asylum seekers in Australia’s onshore detention system are held in Prison-like facilities In the suburbs of our capital, or Christmas Island and Yongah Hill in Western Australia, in a remote part of the country.
In December 2019, at least 504 refugees and asylum seekers Hundreds of other immigration detainees within the system, Including those who are about to be deportedDetention may last for months or even Year.
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How people in immigration detention cope with uncertainty
Despite the monotony of detention, detainees were not allowed to become comfortable. Between July 2017 and May 2019, 8,000 involuntary movements system. Some of these are deportations, but others are forced transfers between facilities.
Detainees are rarely given an explanation when they are transferred. The opacity of this practice is undoubtedly one of its worrying aspects and has been criticized by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). Report Last year, the committee recommended that when evictions occur
Department and agency staff should, to the extent possible, ensure that the person (…) receives a clear explanation of the reasons for the transfer.
Rebecca Lemay/AAP
‘Naked, random cruelty’
My research participants stressed the secrecy surrounding the transfers. Detainees were often transferred with little warning or explanation. Sometimes they knew the transfer was going to happen, but they were often moved with only a few hours’ notice.
In some cases, staff would wake detainees and give them a few minutes to gather their belongings. As one frequent visitor to Yongah Hill Detention Centre described,
Always leaving early in the morning – you only have 10 minutes to pack. They might lose something. They are always in such a hurry. It is traumatic for them.
A visitor to Brisbane’s immigration transit accommodation described detainees as facing “pure, random cruelty” and feeling deeply vulnerable. Detainees also feel deeply vulnerable.
There were always heart-wrenching scenes, one family or another being dragged away and put on planes with almost no notice. And other refugees were very upset because they saw people being dragged away, people crying and begging (…) You never knew if it would be you tomorrow morning.
AHRC has recorded “Excessive” use of constraints During the transfer period. Just in the past two weeks, Federal Ombudsman observed that handcuffs had become an “accepted transfer practice” during transportation.
In his recommendations, the Ombudsman recommended
The Air Transport Security Regulations (aims to) limit the use of mechanical restraints to situations where there is a real risk to the safety of the aircraft and the risk cannot be mitigated by any other option.
The human cost of forced evictions
In addition to the stress of the transfer process, resettlement separates detainees from their support networks within the facility and from friends, advocates, doctors and lawyers in the community. As a regular visitor to Melbourne’s migrant transit accommodation explained, the experience of resettlement is one of loss.
They may put down roots and make some friends locally, but when they move they lose the bonds they have built. If they receive any medical help they lose their connection to the medical establishment and their ability to learn English decreases.
Interstate transfers are particularly disruptive for people with family in the community. Partners and children without social or economic resources in Australia are rarely able to visit loved ones.
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Explained: How Australia determines who is a genuine refugee
The desperation that the transfers created was perhaps best captured by the stories I heard of detainees who had harmed themselves before or after their transfers.
These testimonies are consistent with previous studies A Victoria University study has found a link between forced removal and self-harm in immigration detention facilities. The researchers found forced removal to be one of the “predisposing factors or triggers” for self-harm in immigration detention and prison settings.
Unreasonable behavior
Transferring detainees within Australia’s immigration detention network cannot be justified on both an economic and a humanitarian basis. My research has consistently concluded that forced transfers cause harm. They harm detainees and those who love and support them.
As a country, we can find better ways to spend taxpayer dollars.
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