After spending eight years in detention camps in the Pacific Ocean, dozens of illegal immigrants were released with temporary residence permits in Australia, where authorities sent them to prevent them from seeking asylum on the island. oenegés.

Over the past two days, more than 60 people have been allowed to leave hotels and detention centers in Brisbane, Sydney and Darwin, where they have been transferred for medical reasons, according to the Refugee Action Coalition and several lawyers.

For years, Canberra sought to bring these secret immigrants to detention camps on the island of Manus, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, or the small state of Nuru, under a policy of immigration condemned by numerous organizations to protect human rights.

Economic and legal reason

Home Secretary Peter Dutton explained on the radio that it was cheaper to release them than to detain them. The first group of about 60 people has already been released from December to January.

Nolin Balachandran Harendran, of the Sydney West Law and Migration Organization, described the releases as condemning the legitimacy of the detention of several immigrants in court. “We believe it’s because we established that we were detained without cause,” he told AFP.

Ian Rindul of the Refugee Action Coalition has called on the government to release another 75 detainees detained in Australia. It is estimated that more than 250 immigrants have been detained in Papua New Guinea and Nuru for legal reasons.

rml (afp, Brisbane Times, ABC News)