Refugee and human rights groups will launch a campaign demanding the federal government scrap a controversial migration amendment to explicitly remove procedural fairness in deportation decisions for foreign-born criminals, a proposal which advocates say is causing alarm among migrants.

The Senate on Thursday rejected a Greens push for an inquiry into the legislation, which the senator David Shoebridge slammed as “one of the nastiest, meanest attacks” on multicultural Australia.

The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said the legislation would “expressly exclude procedural fairness from applying” when the government sought to deport non-citizens who have lost their visa, the latest federal legislative response to the NZYQ high court verdict.

Shoebridge accused the government of trying to “sneak through” the legislation, which Burke introduced into parliament on Tuesday – just an hour before he joined Anthony Albanese to announce Asio’s assessment that Iran had directed antisemitic attacks in Australia.

“Since the bill was tabled, we’ve received calls and messages from anxious and stressed community members asking if they’ll be deported and fearing for their families,” Jana Favero, from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said.

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“Concerned voters are also getting in touch, and we are urging them to contact their MPs to ask them to oppose this attack on human and legal rights.”

The government says the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No 1) bill 2025 seeks to close a loophole associated with the NZYQ verdict, the landmark 2023 high court decision which ruled indefinite immigration detention is unlawful.

The ruling saw more than 200 non-citizens released from immigration detention into the community. The government has made several legislative updates since, with this week’s version specifically formulated to address three men the department is seeking to deport to Nauru, which has accepted them under a third-country arrangement.

The three cases have lodged a series of appeals against their deportation, after the men were found not to be refugees and not owed protection.

Speaking to parliament, Burke said principles of “procedural fairness” needed to be suspended in some cases because those provisions “are being used by noncitizens to delay and frustrate their removal, at cost to the commonwealth in circumstances where it is neither necessary nor appropriate for it to continue to apply.”

Burke said the bill would mean that actions taken by government in order to resettle someone in a third country “are not conditioned on an obligation to afford procedural fairness”.

He said the changes would not remove procedural fairness from decisions around granting or cancelling visas, nor merits review, but were “largely directed at noncitizens who have come to the end of any visa processes, and who are on a removal pathway.”

But Favero said the move had sparked alarm among migrant families.

“Deportation decisions can tear families apart and destroy people’s lives. Life-changing decisions like this must be made fairly, with the right to be notified and to respond – the most basic legal protections against government mistakes. Rushing through laws that strip away these fundamental rights is reckless and dangerous,” she said.

The Refugee Advice and Casework Service and the Human Rights Law Centre have also raised concerns.

Josephine Langbien, the HRLC’s associate legal director, claimed the government was seeking to “permanently exile people to Nauru without having to consider the consequences”.

“This legislation would save the government from having to consider basic questions like whether someone can access the medical care they need in Nauru, or whether they would be permanently separated from their families,” she said.

The opposition leader, Sussan Ley, on Tuesday accused the government of a “rushed, secretive and chaotic” process around the bill.

Shoebridge on Thursday attempted to send the bill for a Senate inquiry, in a move supported by the Greens and David Pocock, but Labor and Coalition senators voted against the referral.

“In what was a chaotic day [Tuesday] with so much other news around, we saw the Albanese Labor government try to sneak through another vicious attack on the rights of refugees, and the rights of people seeking asylum,” Shoebridge said in the Senate.