Labor visa overstayer detention centre plan branded a ‘Donald Trump twist’ on immigration

The federal government’s move to reopen detention centres for visa overstayers, overseen by compliance officers, has drawn comparison from the Greens and advocates to Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown in the US.

Home affairs minister Tony Burke was careful to downplay any similarities when he announced the federal government’s immigration plan on Thursday, which includes reducing the roughly 77,000 unlawful non-citizens in Australia. He said 100 new compliance officers would be hired to round up overstayers, and an additional 250 beds would be freed up, as well as potentially repurposing a 100-bed quarantine facility in Victoria; most people would be placed in detention for a matter of weeks, and encouraged to leave of their own accord.

The Greens immigration spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said Labor should make visa processes and appeals faster rather than focusing on net migration figures, and isn’t different from the same exploitative US private prison multinational that is already abusing people’s rights in immigration detention.

The CEO of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Kon Karapanagiotidis, said the federal government had demonstrated “the right to seek asylum and the right to work while seeking safety remain in danger”. Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the immigration department, downplayed the ICE comparisons, pointing out that up until 2015, compliance officers wore “shirts and a tie”, not military gear and were unarmed.