Labor’s plans for visa overstayer detention centres branded a ‘Donald Trump twist’ on immigration | Australian politics
The federal authorities’s transfer to reopen detention centres for visa overstayers, overseen by compliance officers, has drawn comparability from the Greens and advocates to Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown within the United States.
The residence affairs minister, Tony Burke, was cautious to downplay any similarities when he introduced the federal government’s immigration plan on Thursday, which incorporates decreasing the roughly 77,000 illegal non-citizens in Australia.
He instructed the National Press Club the coverage was returning to a “routine course of” that existed previous to 2015, whereby overstayers have been introduced into detention centres if their visas lapsed previous to securing flights residence.
“This is just not the kind of operation that some folks have seen on TV taking place in different nations,” Burke mentioned.
Burke mentioned 100 new compliance officers can be employed to spherical up overstayers, and a further 250 beds can be freed, in addition to doubtlessly repurposing a 100-bed quarantine facility in Victoria. He mentioned most individuals can be positioned in detention for a matter of weeks, and inspired to depart of their very own accord.
Greens immigration spokesperson, David Shoebridge, mentioned Labor ought to make visa processes and appeals quicker somewhat than specializing in internet migration figures.
“This is the place Labor has sunk to, reheating Tony Abbott’s immigration assaults, with a 2026 Donald Trump twist,” he mentioned.
“Labor’s new immigration jails can be run by the identical exploitative US personal jail multinational that’s already abusing folks’s rights in immigration detention right here.
“If the Minister doesn’t need these insurance policies to be in comparison with ICE, he mustn’t behave like ICE.”
In 2025, the US personal jail firm Management and Training Corporation received a $2.3bn contract to run onshore detention in Australia below its native subsidiary Secure Journeys, despite serious concerns about MTC’s monitor file. MTC is one among a handful of personal jail operators running ICE detention facilities.
Burke instructed Guardian Australia Shoebridge was making a “ridiculous declare” by evaluating Labor’s coverage to the Trump administration’s immigration stance.
“The Green Party is aware of it isn’t true,” he mentioned. “We are merely going again to what Australia had finished for many years till necessary cancellation began, which was to have round 250 beds used when somebody now not had a visa however was refusing to depart.”
The shift occurred below then-immigration minister, Peter Dutton, who launched necessary visa cancellations for legal offenders in 2014, which quickly stuffed detention centres and noticed the division quietly pivot to issuing short-term bridging visas for low-risk overstayers to handle voluntary departures.
Ramping up removals types a part of Labor’s plan to convey internet abroad migration down from 292,100 to fulfill finances forecasts of 245,000 in 2026/27 and 225,000 annually thereafter.
The former head of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Dr Gillian Triggs, instructed AAP that Australia’s pre-2015 migration detention regime put kids in a “horrific pipeline”, with a whole bunch held in detention with out schooling, most of whom have been “severely mentally and bodily in poor health”.
In 2023, a landmark excessive court docket choice outlawed indefinite detention with out affordable prospect of being returned to at least one’s personal nation, but it surely’s unclear how that may apply to this variation.
The CEO of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Kon Karapanagiotidis, mentioned the federal authorities had demonstrated “the proper to hunt asylum and the proper to work whereas in search of security stay in peril”.
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“Minister Burke went to nice lengths to reassure Australians this may not appear like Donald Trump’s immigration raids,” he mentioned. “But take a look at what is definitely being deliberate … This will double Australia’s immigration detention regime.
“We is not going to stand by whereas migrants and refugees are used as political punching baggage.”
Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the immigration division, downplayed the ICE comparisons, declaring that up till 2015, compliance officers wore “shirts and a tie”, not navy gear and have been unarmed.
“They operated fully otherwise,” he mentioned. “They didn’t enter any premises of any employer with out the permission of the employer or a warrant.”
Rizvi mentioned one of many “largest capabilities” of the compliance workforce was educating employers about easy methods to verify the working rights of international workers, which he mentioned “all seems to have stopped”.
“Given that this cohort is at file ranges and grows by round 1,000 monthly, what ought to the federal government do a couple of cohort with no remaining proper to be in Australia, noting that this cohort can be extremely weak to exploitation and dwell within the shadows of society?” he mentioned.
The authorized director on the Human Rights Law Centre, Sanmati Verma, mentioned the federal authorities ought to spend money on safety for undocumented migrants who had been exploited at work somewhat than “needlessly increasing the punitive immigration detention community”.
“Rounding up undocumented migrants and locking them in detention is a profoundly anti-worker proposal that undermines the Albanese Government’s dedication to stamping out trendy slavery,” she mentioned.
With Australian Associated Press
