{"id":713334,"date":"2026-06-03T20:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T20:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/713334\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T20:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T20:54:09","slug":"sara-fears-her-father-will-be-deported-from-australia-to-nauru-a-place-of-final-and-lifelong-punishment-australian-immigration-and-asylum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/713334\/","title":{"rendered":"Sara fears her father will be deported from Australia to Nauru \u2013 a place of \u2018final and lifelong punishment\u2019 | Australian immigration and asylum"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the high court handed down a judgment in 2023 finding indefinite immigration detention unlawful<\/a>, Sara* received a phone call that she still remembers vividly.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I answer it and he basically says, Baba, I need you to come pick me up,\u201d Sara recalls.<\/p>\n

On the other end of the line was her father, Youssef*, who, after five years, was finally free to leave the confines of a detention centre in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI drove down there and it was the first time that I actually saw him outside of detention or incarceration since I was very, very little,\u201d Sara says.<\/p>\n

The pair exchanged hugs and kisses, and that evening shared KFC \u2013 Youssef\u2019s favourite meal \u2013 with Sara\u2019s mother. Sara and Youssef spent the next two years making up for lost time and \u201cbonded deeply\u201d over their shared interest in technology and cars, including a day out to watch the Australian Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

Youssef is one of about 350 non-citizens who make up what is referred to as the NZYQ cohort: a group of people with disparate backgrounds and family circumstances, with criminal convictions of varying severity, some with refugee status. All face potential deportation to the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sara says her family will crumble if her father is permanently sent away, while human rights lawyers and researchers warn Australia\u2019s immigration detention policies, including last year\u2019s secretive multibillion-dollar resettlement deal with Nauru<\/a>, are causing lifelong harm to children and families left behind.<\/p>\n

Youssef came to Australia in the 1990s, seeking protection after absconding from military service in his homeland, and was granted a permanent protection visa in 2001.<\/p>\n

Sara describes her father as \u201cvery smart, witty and sarcastic\u201d and credits him for teaching her algebra when she was little, and trying to teach her Arabic. But she also says he \u201chad a bad run of it\u201d, first injuring his back, then developing a drug addiction, and cycling in and out of jail throughout her childhood.<\/p>\n

Over a 13-year period, while struggling with his drug habit, he was convicted of dozens of non-violent property and drug offences. He also served 10 months in prison for aggravated burglary and nine months for burglary and assault with a weapon. <\/p>\n

His visa was eventually cancelled on character grounds and, when his last jail sentence ended in 2019, he was transferred to immigration detention.<\/p>\n

Youssef sought to have the visa cancellation overturned by the administrative appeals tribunal and in federal court but was unsuccessful. His application to seek leave to appeal to the high court was also knocked back.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hardest thing that I ever had to do\u2019<\/p>\n

Sara and Youssef\u2019s reunion was short-lived.<\/p>\n

In December 2025, after the government signed the Nauruan deal, Sara says seven armed Australian Border Force officers arrived at her mother\u2019s home to re-detain him.<\/p>\n

They came twice when he was not at home, so Sara offered to take him to the immigration office the next day, which she says was the \u201chardest thing that I ever had to do in my life\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould you imagine having to drive your family member, someone that you love and care for, to a place where you know they\u2019re never going to leave again?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She now fears her father will soon be deported, having been issued a Nauruan visa.<\/p>\n

Sara says her father has served his time. Photograph: Chris Hopkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

She says he has \u201cgotten himself together\u201d in the almost 10 years since his last conviction and that his re-detention \u201cis effectively condemning us and punishing us for something that he\u2019s already served his time for\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Australian government has already sent 12 non-citizens to Nauru on 30-year visas as part of the agreement signed last year, while many more await deportation.<\/p>\n

The legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, Sanmati Verma, says deporting people such as Youssef to Nauru constitutes a \u201cfinal and lifelong punishment\u201d.<\/p>\n

double quotation markMy life, my dad\u2019s life and my mum\u2019s life are sitting in limboSara<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Australian government is snatching people from their homes, their families in the community, detaining them like Sara\u2019s father, and deporting them to Nauru on 30-year visas that they never applied for,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people in Youssef\u2019s position have not only been sentenced and served their time in relation to an offence, they\u2019ve often spent double or triple that time in indefinite detention, which the high court has found to be punitive and unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to data the centre has accessed, 131 of the people in the NZYQ cohort have children who are Australian citizens and 63 have an Australian citizen partner or spouse.<\/p>\n

Verma says the government has shown a disregard for the rights of families and children when \u201cdeciding to banish one of their parents to Nauru\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite basic that families belong together and this is the wrong thing that\u2019s being done on our watch,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u2018Profound and adverse impacts\u2019<\/p>\n

In response to questions, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke<\/a>, thanked the Nauruan government for offering to take people who had been stripped of their Australian visas.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost everyone who is on a visa in Australia is a welcome guest,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA very small number of people breach the nation\u2019s trust, have their visas cancelled and have to leave. I am grateful that the government of Nauru came to Australia and offered to assist on this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Home Affairs said it would not comment on individual cases for privacy reasons.<\/p>\n

Dr Michelle Peterie, of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies at the University of Sydney, has researched the effect of detention and deportation on children and families for more than a decade. For the past three years she has been the lead researcher on a major study examining the \u201cprofound and adverse impacts\u201d on children and young people whose parents were taken away.<\/p>\n

Peterie says the voices of children are almost entirely absent in Australia\u2019s highly politicised immigration debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we separate families in this way, it has rippling impacts that are felt by children and by subsequent generations, potentially for years and decades into the future,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe harm that we are inflicting is exceptionally serious and we need to really think carefully before we tear families apart in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the study conducted in collaboration with the Australian Human Rights Commission, which is due to be released this month, researchers interviewed more than 100 affected children and young people.<\/p>\n

Peterie says the sense of loss for children was most acute in the small everyday moments, such as being picked up from school or being taught how to drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese aren\u2019t harms that disappear overnight, these are losses that shape children and young people\u2019s education, wellbeing, careers, family planning, even their parenting for years after the deportation is enacted,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Sara fears for her father\u2019s health on Nauru and for her mother\u2019s ability to cope without him. She is pleading for Burke to intervene.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life, my dad\u2019s life and my mum\u2019s life are sitting in limbo,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure \u2026 Tony Burke would do anything in his power to help his family and so I would beg him to help mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Names have been changed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the high court handed down a judgment in 2023 finding indefinite immigration detention unlawful, Sara* received a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-713334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}