Immigration Dept Leak Claims Kids In Detention Reclassified, Not Released

It turns out if you can effectively control the media’s first-hand access to asylum seekers in the way Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has, you can almost get away with saying anything you wish. Yeah, you can almost proclaim that for the first time in a decade, there are no asylum-seeking children in detention on Australian soil. 

Almost.

Thanks to an immigration department leak to The Guardian, we now know this morning’s announcement was kinda BS. More than that, it was calculated BS – while the official statement to News Corp celebrated bringing the nation’s children-in-onshore-detention count down to zero, it’s been revealed that release was allegedly “a bureaucratic sleight of hand.”

By that, the leaker means families at Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre who were in “held detention” were likely reclassified as being in “community detention” on Friday, without actually being released from the centre. If the leaker is to be believed, detainees were just given a flash-bang new title, Dutton got celebrate his milestone, and there was some good ol’ Labor slagging thrown in for good measure. 

The Guardian points out that while some particular restrictions on those still detained may have been eased, they’re still very much within the confines of our onshore detention centres, whether it’s classified as “community detention” or not.